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YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 



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YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER ^^-^ 



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THOUGHTS ON FOOD AND COOKERY. 



BY WM. A. ALCOTT, 

Author of the Young Wife, Young Mother, House I Live In, and 
Young Man's Guide, and Editor of the Library of Health. 




Seconlr Steteotgpe SEfiitfoiu 



^. 



BOSTON : 
GEORGE W. LIGHT, 1 CORNHILL. 

1838. 









3^9^ 



Sintered according to act of Congress, in the year 1838, by Wm. A. 
Alcott, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massa- 
chusetts. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Silent influence of the house-keeper. Her character as 
a teacher and educator. Should the mother be the 
house-keeper ? Vulgar notions. Anecdote. Dignity 
of the house-keeper asserted. She is, in some respects, 
a legislator — a counsellor — a minister — a missionary — 
a reformer^a physician. . . 21—48 



CHAPTER II. FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

1. Obey the dictates of conscience. 2. Dare to disobey 
the mandates of fashion. 3. Dignify your profession. 
4. Keep the house yourself, as much as possible. 5. 
Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well. 6. 
Importance of securing the aid of the husband and 
others. 7. Anecdote and reflections 49 — 60 



CHAPTER III. HAVING A PLAN. 

Why a plan is indispensable. Hour of rising. Ar- 
rangements. Breakfast. Particular advantages. Mrs. 
Parkes's opinion. Time gained, how to be employed. 61 — ^70 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. KEEPING ACCOUNTS. 

Every housewife should keep her own accounts. Defi- 
ciency in female instruction. Method of keeping an 
account. Advantages 71 — 74 



CHAPTER V. KEEPING A JOURNAL. 

General importance of keeping a journal. Qualifications. 
Method should be simple. Materials of the journal. 
A difficulty — how overcome. Reflections. . . 75—78 



CHAPTER VI. NATURE OF FOOD IN GENERAL. 

In what sense man is omnivorous. Man a free agent. 
Animal food. Nutritious character of food. Table of 
nutritious substances. Second table, from the French. 
Inferences from these tables. Proofs of the inferior 
nutritive powers of lean meat. Three great divisions 
of aliments. The grand object of all food. . . 79 — 90 



CHAPTER VII. FARINACEOUS FOOD. 

Primary aliments. Secondary aliments. Substitutes. 
The following part of the work a vocabulary. Gen- 
eral plan. Its contents 91 — 94 



CHAPTER VIII. FOOD FROM WHEAT. 

Remarks on Wheat in general. Bread. Why wheat 
meal should not be bolted. Unfermented cakes. Loaf 
bread. Mixed bread. Crackers, biscuit, &c. Bread 
pudding. Boiled wheat. Toast, &c. Bread and 
milk. Bread and butter. Pastry. Gingerbread. Flour 
puddings. Bread and fruits. Potatoe bread. . 95 — 116 



CONTENTS. 7 

CHAPTER IX. INDIAN CORN, AND ITS COM- 

POUNDS. 

Qualities of Indian corn. Its excellence as food. Hulled' 
corn. Boiled corn. Hommony. Indian cakes — eaten 
cool. Warm cakes. Parched corn. Boiled pudding. 
Brown bread. Baked pudding. Hasty pudding. 
Loaf bread. Dumplings. Meat bread. Gruel. Green 
corn. Polenta. 117—136 

CHAPTER X. FOOD FROM RYE. 

Extensive use of rye. Brown bread. Rye bread. Mixed 
bread. Biscuit, &c. Unleavened cakes. Ginger- 
bread. Puddings. Gruel 137—142 

CHAPTER XI. RICE. 

Rice extensively used. Mistaken notion of its producing 
costiveness and blindness. Boiled rice. Baked rice. 
Rice bread. Rice and milk 143 — 148 

CHAPTER XII. BARLEY AND OATS. 

Bafley much used in Europe. Its properties. Mixed 
bread. Pearl barley. Oats 149 — 150 

CHAPTER XIII. THE POTATOE. 

Importance of the potatoe as an article of diet. Modes 
of cooking it — boiling, baking, steaming and roasting. 
Bad boiling. Examples of a better mode. Cooking a 
potatoe well, seldom understood. The "civic crown." 
Mashed potatoes. Potatoe bread. Potatoes and milk. 
Potatoe soup. " Hash." Fried potatoes. The potatoe 
sometimes poisonous 151 — 162 



8 CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XIV.. BEANS AND PEAS. 

Beans and peas produce flatulency. Why. How they 
' should be cooked and used. Green peas and beans. 
Their pods. Bread of peas and beans. Puddings. 
Pea soup. Bean porridge 163 — 168 

CHAPTER XV. BUCKWHEAT AND MILLET. 

Buckwheat pancakes. In Germany, used for bread, 
puddings, «&;c. Hulled buckwheat. Anecdote of Peter 
the Great. Buckwheat bread in Boston. Millet. 169 — 170 



CHAPTER XVI. BEET, CARROT AND PARSNIP. 

Richness of the beet. Boiling, steaming, baking and 
roasting it. Pickled beets. Medicinal properties. 
Nature of the carrot. Fit only for strong, healthy 
stomachs. Seasoning it. Does it prevent intestinal 
worms? Medicinal effects. The parsnip. How kept. 
Should it be eaten young ? 171 — 174 

CHAPTER XVII. THE TURNIP. 

Character of the turnip. Use made of it by the Romans. 
Mashing it 175—176 

CHAPTER XVIII. THE ONION AND RADISH. 

Dr. Paris's opinion. Modes of cooking the onion. How 
to preserve it. Radishes. Objections to their use. 177 — 178 

CHAPTER XIX. THE SQUASH, PUMPKIN AND 
TOMATO. 

The squash. Boiled. Made into pies. The pumpkin. 
Pies. The tomato 179—180 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XX. CABBAGE, LETTUCE, &c. 

Cabbage of little value. How best adapted to use. 
Boiled. Raw. Sour crout. Eaten with ham and 
chesnuts. Lettuce. Anecdote of Galen. Greens 
and celery 181 — 184 



CHAPTER XXL ARROW-ROOT, TAPIOCA, &c. 

Nutritive properties of arrow-root. Made into jelly. 
Eaten with rice. Sago. Mushrooms. . . . 185 — 186 



CHAPTER XXn. ON FRUITS IN GENERAL. 

Second grand division of aliments. Principles inter- 
spersed. Apology for the order and arrangement. 187 — 188 



CHAPTER XXIII. THE APPLE. 

The apple one of the Creator's noblest gifts. Varieties 
of this fruit. Little used for food. The apple very 
nutritious. Sweet apples. Rules for selecting the 
apple. Raw apples best. Baked apples. Why apples 
sometimes " disagree." Five rules for learning to use 
apples as food. Apples for breakfast. Accompani- 
ments. Boiling apples. Apple sauce. Danger of 
putting it in home-made earthen vessels. Stewing 
apples. Baking and roasting. Baked apples and milk. 
Apple dumplings. Puddings. Bird's nest puddings. 
Fried apples. Preserves. Mince pies. Improved 
mince pies. Other preparations of apples. Apple 
bread. All apples should be perfect. Never cook 
green apples 189 — 206 



10 CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXIV. THE PEAR. 

Quality of pears. Bad ones. Baking and roasting pears. 
Cautions in preserving them. Forcing maturity. 
Mealy pears. Cultivation of the pear. Stewing. 
Drying. Pear jam. .- 207—210 



CHAPTER XXV. THE PEACH, APRICOT AND 
NECTARINE. 
Stone fruits in general. Nature of the peach. Cooking 
it. Drying. The apricot and nectarine. . . 211 — 212 

CHAPTER XXVI. THE STRAWBERRY. 

Prejudice against fruits — how unreasonable. Fruits a 
preventive of disease. Green fruits injurious. Market 
fruits very imperfect. Cultivating the strav/berry. 
General laws of summer fruits. Strawberries for 
breakfast. Eaten alone. Eaten with wine, sugar, 
milk, &c. Strawberries and bread. Used for lun- 
cheon. Preventiveof gravel and other diseases. 213 — 226 

CHAPTER XXVII. THE RASPBERRY. 

Medicinal character of the raspberry. Its varieties. 
Every family should cultivate it, as they should the 
strawberry. Difficulties. How overcome. Female 
labor 227—234 

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BLACKBERRY. 

The best variety of this fruit. Raising it ourselves. Tte 
dewberry. Prejudice against the high blackberry. 
Anecdote to show how unfounded it is. Abuses of the 
blackberry 235—238 



CONTENTS. 11 



CHAPTER XXIX. THE WHORTLEBERRY. 

An error. The whortleberry with milk. Not improved 
by cookery Varieties of this fruit 239 — ^240 



CHAPTER XXX. THE GOOSEBERRY, CURRANT 
AND GRAPE. 

Character of the gooseberry. When useful. The currant. 
Used unripe. The grape. What varieties useful. 241 — 244 

CHAPTER XXXI. THE CHERRY. 

Proper selection of cherries. Swallowing the stones. 
Its evils. Drinking wine or spirits with cherries. 
No cooking into pies, puddings, «&c., admissible. 
Varieties of the cherry. It should be eaten in the 
morning 245 — 252 

CHAPTER XXXII. THE PLUM. 

The plum indigestible. It should be eaten alone. The 
prune 253—254 

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE MELON. 

The muskmelon. Hot bed cultivation. The water- 
melon. How sometimes raised 255 — ^256 



CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CUCUMBER. 

Evils of the cucumber overrated. Ripe cucumbers. 
Not very nutritious 257 — 258 



12 CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXXV. THE FIG AND RAISIN. 

The fig extensively used for food. Fresh figs. Dried 
figs. Figs and bread. The raisin 259 — ^260 



CHAPTER XXXVI. NUTS. 

The chesnut much used by the ancients. Boiled ches- 
nuts. How used now in Europe. Used for bread. 261 — 264 



CHAPTER XXXVII. ANIMAL FOOD. 

Where animal food is admissible. Should be used, if 
used at all, principally as a condiment. What animals 
have been eaten. Arrangement of the subject. 265 — 266 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. MILK. 

What the circumstances are in which milk is admissible. 
Milk for infants. Milk for diseased persons. Use of 
it by the Arabs. Milk a cheap food. Healthy milk. 
Milk poured on bread. Milk toast 267—272 

CHAPTER XXXIX. BUTTER. 

Butter on bread. "Made" dishes. Butter-eating car- 
ried to the highest excess. The real evils of eating 
butter 273—274 

CHAPTER XL. CHEESE. 

General properties of cheese. Good cheese. Bad cheese. 
Cheese sometimes poisonous. Anatto. Arsenic, 
Grand objection to cheese. New and old cheese 
compared - . 275 — 2716 



CONTENTS. 13 



CHAPTER XLI. EGGS. 

How eggs should be cooked. Rarely boiled. Poached. 
Artificial or "made" dishes. Fresh eggs. How to 
preserve eggs. Egg cider. Eggs and wine. . 277 — ^282 



CHAPTER XUI. FLESH AND FISH. 

General remarks. Simplicity in diet. Best kinds of 
flesh. Wild animals. Fattened animals. Salted meat. 
Smoked meat. Meat pies. Boiling. Broiling. Bak- 
ing. Frying. Fish. Animal food sometimes poison- 
ous. Shellfish 283—288 



CHAPTER XLHI. SUMMARY OF LEADING PRIN- 
CIPLES. 

Simplicity in diet. Penalties of neglecting it. Impor- 
tance of mastication. Temperature of food should be 
low. Why it should be so. Why purely nutritious 
substances should not be used. Why solid food is 
preferable to liquid. Drinks in general. Our meals 
should be regular. Proper hours of eating. Number 
of meals a day. Rules for the proper combination of 
several articles of food at a meal. Regard to the 
season of the year, hour of the day, and time of 
the week. Regard to our employment. Regard to 
age 289—302 



CHAPTER XLIV. COOKERY, AS IT IS. 

Present object of Cookery. What its object should be. 
Example of abuse. Error of eating hot food. Con- 
diments and accompaniments of food. Another ex- 



14 CONTENTS. 

ample of abuse in cookery. Another, still. Objections 
to cool food answered. A laughable sight. Gustatory- 
pleasure perfectly lawful. Who best secure it. A 
great but common mistake. Losses sustained by those 
who have fashionable appetites. An anecdote of a 
country table. Usual views and feelings of house- 
keepers about plain meals. " Trimmings " of our 
meals. Woman too much a slave to fashion. Cooking 
not her main object. What she should glory in, if she 
glories at all 30^—318 



CHAPTER, XLV. COOKERY, AS IT SHOULD BE. 

" Pulling down " and building up. Popular complaints 
against dietetic writers. Examples of telling what 
people should do. Boiling corn. Why cool food is 
better than hot. Objections to cooking in large quan- 
tities at once. Directions on the subject. Rice, beans 
and peas. Potatoes. Cooking economically. Era- 
ploying children in domestic concerns. Its advan- 
tages. Intentions of Providence in this matter. Ob- 
jections considered. Why daughters hate domestic 
concerns. Proposed remedy. Oral instruction by 
mothers who are house-keepers. Modified plans. Ra- 
tional cooking a simple and easy concern. Three 
fourths of the time now spent in it wasted. . . 319 — 340 



CHAPTER XLVI. ECONOMY" OF TIME, BY A 
REFORMATION IN COOKERY. 

Estimates of labor. Table. Results of the estimates. 
Facts. Difficulties — some of them removed. Three 
fourths of female labor in cooking might be saved. 
Anecdotes to illustrate the subject. . . . . 341 — 350 



, 



CONTENTS. 15 

CHAPTER XLVII. EXPENSE OF ANIMAL AND 
VEGETABLE FOOD COMPARED. 

Table of comparisons. Results. Objections considered. 
Examples to illustrate the subject. Another table of 
comparison. Preservation of cooked vegetable food. 
A third table. Fourth table. Reflections. . . 351—368 

CHAPTER XLVni. HOW TO BEGIN THE WORK 
OF REFORMATION. 

First principle. Sudden changes. First direction to in- 
quirers. Difficulties in their way. These difficulties 
illustrated. None need fear to do what is known to 
be right. Anecdote. Supposed process of reform in ' 
house-keeping. Remarks and reflections. . , 369 — 390 

CHAPTER XLIX. RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 

Various kinds of bread. Puddings. Cakes. Rice. Corn , 
and hommony. Porridge. Pies. Jellies, &c. Yeast. 
Beans and peas. Potatoes. Various articles. . 391—424 



PREFACE. 



Whatever views may be suggested by the 
title, this book is really and truly a work on Physi- 
cal Education. Like the, " Young Mother," with 
which the public are already familiarly acquainted, 
it has for its principal end and aim, the physical 
improvement of the community. It is intended 
as a means of rendering house-keepers thinking 
beings, and not as they have hitherto often been, 
mere pieces of mechanism ; or, what is little 
better, the mere creatures of habit or slaves of 
custom. 

Though I have compared this work, as regards 
its end and ai7n, to the " Young Mother," it is a 
separate and entirely different volume. That work 
treats chiefly of the general physical management 
of young children ; but the " Young House- 
keeper " is almost wholly confined to the nature 



18 



PREFACE. 



and preparation of food. — The " Young Wife," 
recently published, occupies another department 
still. It is substantially an intellectual and moral 
work ; and treats, for the most part, of the peculiar 
duties of the wife to herself and her husband. 

A large proportion of the books which have 
been written professedly for house-keepers, are 
little more than large bundles of recipes for fash- 
ionable cookery. I know of no work in this 
department which contains, to any considerable 
extent, important principles, unless it be Mrs. 
Parkes' " Domestic Duties ; " but this, along with 
much that is valuable, embraces also a great deal 
which is wholly inapplicable to the customs or to 
the state of society in the United States. 

A principal aim of the following treatise has 
been, to elevate the important profession for whom 
it is written, instead of sinking it below its present 
unworthy level. I should be glad to convince the 
most skeptical that house-keeping is as much a 
science, and in view of its results in the formation 
of human health and character, as deserving of 
study — and of hard study, too — as geography or 
mathematics. The duties and destinies of the 



PREFACE. 19 

house-keeper are too important to be misunder- 
stood. The elements of the nation, nay, of the 
world itself, are prepared, to a very great extent, 
in our nurseries, and around the domestic fireside. 

Some may think — ^before they have read it — 
that I have devoted too large a proportion of the 
volume to food and cookery; as if the house- 
keeper had little else to do but to study the 
art of preparing food for her household. Yet I 
believe I have devoted quite as much space to 
other and collateral topics, as is usual with books 
designed for the same class of persons. Besides, 
I have not attempted to prepare a perfect work on 
house-keeping. My object is, to speak on those 
points of which I have thought most, and which 
appear to be most neglected by other writers ; 
especially such as are very closely connected with 
physical education. 

For the recipes of the last chapter, I am prin- 
cipally indebted to judicious house-keepers in this 
vicmity and elsewhere, with whom, so far as I 
know, they originated. A few have, however, 
been selected — though seldom without some modi- 
fication or abridgment — from the best books 1 



20 



PREFACE. 



could find on the subject. The collection, after 
all, is not very large. Small as it is, however, 
some may find it tedious. But it must be far less 
so, I am sure, than works which are little else than 
mere recipes — which, instead of one hundred or 
one hundred and twenty, contain from one to two 
thousand. 

The work, however, whatever may be its char- 
acter or its tendency, is at length before the public. 
I hope it will be serviceable. I hope it will prove 
a timely contribution to the cause of human im- 
provement — to the melioration, the elevation, the 
restoration of fallen humanity. 



I 



Boston, May 1, 1838. 



THE 



YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 



CHAPTER I. 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Silent influence of the house-keeper. Her character as a 
teacher and educator. Should the mother be the house- 
keeper } Vulgar notions. Anecdote. Dignity of the 
house-keeper asserted. She is, in some respects, a legisla- 
tor — a counsellor — a minister — a missionary — a reformer — 
a physician. 

It often happens that the most important results 
in the natural world are brought about by causes 
which operate silently, if not imperceptibly. Thus 
the growth of vegetation, though effected in a 
greater or less degree by the strong wind, the vio- 
lent rain, and the heat and glare of the noonday 
sun, is yet still more effectually promoted by the 
mild action of the gentler breezes, the softly de- 
scending dew, and the less intense heat. More 
than this, even, is true. It is not so much by 
pieans of the dew, properly so called, or even the 



22 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

gentler breezes, or the more direct rays of the great 
source of light and heat, that the earth is rendered 
fruitful, and fitted to be the abode of man and 
beast, as by the motion of an atmosphere, holding 
constantly in solution a large quantity of water, in 
the form of vapor, which the earth seems to imbibe, 
and in a most wonderful manner work up into the 
living forms of the animal and vegetable kingdom. 
These living forms, too, often seem weakened and 
debilitated rather than invigorated by the sun's 
more direct rays* during a few short hours of each 
twenty-four ; while the silent working, night and 
day, in sunshine and in shade, of that light and 
heat of which the sun is supposed to be the ulti- 
mate source, is indispensable — and is the means, 
along with the effects of air and moisture, of ger- 
mination, growth and progress. So in relation to 
animal bodies, it is not that profuse perspiration 
which we sometimes witness or experience, that 
cleanses the system and promotes human health in 
the highest degree ; but that gentler perspiration 
which is scarcely perceptible to the senses, but 
N'^ich, so long as we are in tolerable health, 
whe we •'^^ pra^loyed or unemployed, and 
whether we v, * g on. 

It is somewhat thus, in ine . . human 

character. Too much comparative importance has 
ever been attached to our more direct, not to say 



noisy efforts to promote its growth. Not that these 
are without their influence in the moral world, any- 
more than the violent rain and the strong breeze 
are without influence in the physical ; but an 
undue importance has ever been attached to their 
operation and efficacy. Admit even that the pul- 
pit, the bar, the legislative hall, the college, the 
school and the press, have done all which has been 
supposed. Admit their power, under an Almighty 
Spirit, to regenerate, correct, reform, re-create, 
develope, regulate and direct in every part of the 
intellectual and moral world, were as great as their 
most sanguine adherents have supposed. Would 
it not be still true, that man is most developed, and 
formed, and educated, by causes which, from their 
silent operation, seem to be almost inoperative ? 
Are not those then most effective educators and 
teachers of man, after all, whose lessons teach him 
as though they taught not ? 

If these views are correct — and that they are so 
will not, it is presumed, be questioned — does it not 
Ijehoove us to pay more attention to these silent, 
but therefore certain sources and springs of human 
character ? Have we nothing to do in the way 
of elevating and purifying, if I may so express it, 
the physical, the intellectual, the social, the moral 
atmosphere in which a child lives, and moves, and 
breathes, and grows, for years before those more 



24 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEH. 

direct influences to which I have just alluded can 
be applied ? Have the temperature and the purity 
of the air which a child inhales, fifty thousand 
times in twenty-four hours, nothing to do in the 
formation of his physical character — ^nothing to do 
with the growth, health and strength of a body 
nourished by the blood which .this unceasing venti- 
lating process is intended to regenerate and purify ? 
Have the light or the darkness, the noise or the 
quiet, the sweet tones or the discordant sounds, the 
smiles or the frowns to which the young inhabitant 
of our world is subjected, nothing to do with the for- 
mation and growth of character ? Have the quan- 
tity, quality and condition of the food and the drink 
which are introduced to a child's stomach, and which, 
when assimilated, course their way through every 
part of the living machine twenty-five or thirty 
thousand times every twenty-four hours, nothing to 
do with character ? Have the conversation and con- 
duct of early associates nothing to do with forming 
the character of a being so highly imitative ? Have 
not the actions, the words, the looks, the thoughts, 
even — for little children will sometimes interpret 
thought and feeling — of those who are so con- 
stantly about us as our parents, but especially the 
mother and the house-keeper, a prodigious influence 
in determining whether we shall be selfish or gen- 
erous, self-governing ox given up to the control; 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPEB. 25 

of our passions, temperate or intemperate, sensual 
or pure, earthly or spiritual ? 

These, then, it is believed, are some of the gen- 
tler influences — the teachers that seem to teach 
not — which, like the soft dews of the morning and 
the evening, and the still more efficient moisture 
imbibed from the atmosphere, produce, by their 
never ceasing operation, the most important results. 
INIothers and teachers, says Dr. Rush, sow the 
seeds of nearly all the good and evil in our world. 
Teachers, he might Jiave said, do this ; since man 
is everywhere, in no small degree, what he is, by 
education — and since all persons and things become 
our teachers, and serve to draw forth, develope, or 
form us. Or he might have said, with nearly equal 
truth, that mothers do the work ; since, if the doc- 
trines of the foregoing paragraphs are true, mothers 
must be, from their very position, the most efficient 
teachers. Not that they always do the work well ; 
this is quite another matter. But teach us they 
must — educate us they must — whether their in- 
struction and education be good, bad or indifferent. 

They educate us not only intellectually and 
morally, but physically. It is mothers who operate 
on our whole nature. Other educators, as the 
world now is, seldom reach the physical man. 
This whole field, or nearly the whole of it, is left 
to the sole direction and disposal of the mother 



26 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

and house-keeper. How important, then, is ma- 
ternal influence ! How important that mothers 
should understand this subject ! How important 
that they should not only lunow, but also feel! 
How poorly fitted to sustain the maternal office is 
she who ' neither knows its dignity, nor feels nor 
heeds its responsibilities ! And who that has any 
sense of the incompetency of modern female edu- 
cation, and is aware that scarcely one in a thousand 
is trained either to know or feel the greatness of 
her prerogative, the dignity of her character, or the 
weight and solemnity of her responsibilities, will 
not do with all his might what his hands find to 
do, to change the aspect and tendency of that 
education, and to render woman, and the sphere in 
which she moves, properly understood and appre- 
ciated, especially by herself? 

I take the ground that the most efficient school 
of education is the domestic or family school ; and 
that the mother, whether wise or ignorant, learned 
or unlearned, healthy or sick, pious or impious, is 
the most efficient educator. Especially is this 
school the first and most important for female chil- 
dren. I take it for granted, also, that a work 
which shall assist the mother in the right manage- 
ment of her household, is a work on education ; even 
if it be confined, as 1 intend this shall be, chiefly 
to those maternal duties which bear upon the for- 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 27 

mation of the physical character. I have even 
confined my remarks, in this volume, chiefly to 
what are commonly called household duties. The 
more direct efforts to form physical character have 
been treated in another work ; * and the more direct 
efforts, intellectual, moral and medical, I have re- 
served for future consideration. In short, the duties 
of the mother, as a house-keeper, have seemed to 
me sufficient for a single volume of reasonable size ; 
and I have believed that when we consider that 
the body is the house the soul lives in, and that 
the soul takes its hue, as it were, from the charac- 
ter and condition of the dwelling it occupies, we 
shall not find that the importance of mere house- 
keeping, in its bearing upon the formation of human 
character, has ever been over-estimated, or its ten- 
dencies on human happiness overrated. 

Do I then confound the mother and the house- 
keeper ? Do I consider the terms as synonymous ? 
I certainly do, in the present work. For though 
domestics or servants were admitted to a family, 
the mother should still be the mainspring of all its 
movements. If she does not perform all the labor 
with her own hands, assisted by her husband and 
children, she should at least direct others how to 
do it. What she knows and believes and feels 

* The " Young Mother." 



28 TH^ YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

would most promote the physical welfare of her 
family, should be accomplished, whether it be by 
her own hands or those of others. Am I not, 
then, perfectly right, in using the terms mother and 
house-keeper, for my present purpose, as synony- 
mous ? 

I would, however — for it would make the duties 
of a house-keeper more simple, as well as more 
efficient— that every mother could perform all the 
duties of her family, without that aid which in 
fashionable life is now quite common, and which 
seems to involve the idea of a superior and an 
inferior class of citizens. And I hope and trust 
that I shall be able, in the progress of these pages, 
to make it appear, "that as a general rule — to which 
of course there may be exceptions — every mother 
can do this. 

I use the terras mother and house-keeper in the 
way I do, also, because, after all, they are, in a 
vast majority of cases, the same thing. The cus- 
tom of keeping servants has not yet found its way 
very far beyond the precincts of our cities, towns 
and villages. If these pages should be read at all, 
it will be chiefly by those who perform their own 
household duties ; or at least by those who closely 
oversee and direct. Those who fancy themselves 
excused, by their condition, from the performance 
of both of these duties, will not be likely to take 



DIGNITY or THE HOUSE-KEEPEB. 29 

the trouble to read a work on house-keeping. They 
will prefer to spend their hours in quite another 
manner. Or if they read at all, it is likely to be 
the fashionable nonsense of the day, and not that 
which aims at utility, or public or private happi- 
ness. 

1 am, indeed, acquainted with one house-keeper, 
who, though sensible, intelligent, refined and be- 
nevolent, fully believes the duties of a mother and 
house-keepe*" to be totally incompatible with each 
other. " The female who undertakes to fulfil her 
duties," she observes, " to her husband, her chil- 
dren, and society around her, has already more in 
hand than she can well perform. No matter how 
small her family, so that it consists of husband and 
children, and sustains the relations which a family 
ought to sustain to other families ; its mistress, if 
vAse and conscientious, cannot otherwise than be 
fully employed in the discharge of these duties 
without the addition of more. Not a single spare 
hour is left her for cooking, washing, mending, 
chamber work, &;c. These last — some of them, 
at least — may indeed be and often are done ; but 
they will forever be found to clash with the former — 
and cannot, I am certain, ever be safely or usefully 
performed by the same individual." 

Now it appears to me that this young houso- 
keeper has either made a very serious mistake — 



30 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

and she is not the only individual who inclines, 
now-a-days, to the same opinion — or there must be 
a mistake in the divine arrangement and economy. 
The plan of the Creator most certainly does 
require that these household duties should, as a 
general rule, be performed by the mother. With- 
out attempting, at this time and in this place, to 
go deeply into the argument, I will simply state 
my behef — satisfied if in the progress of what I 
have to say in other parts of the volume, I shall be 
so successful as to make it appear that my belief is 
well founded — that there is not only no incom- 
patibility in the case, but that common sense, 
philosophy and Christianity, actually demand the 
performance of these varied duties by the same 
individual. 

The house-keeper to whom I have referred has, 
however, disclosed to me the secret of her scepti- 
cism. She modestly owns that she was not trained 
to do house-work ; that her heart Is not in it and 
cannot be ; that she sorely dislikes the sight of a 
kitchen, especially of everything that pertains to 
the business of cookery ; and finally, she more 
than intimates a determination to maintain and 
cherish such opinions, views and feelings, through 
life. 

But there is an apology for such females in this 
very fact, that they have been educated wrong. 



BIGNITT OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 31 

They have not only been trained to the neglect 
of household duties, and to the behef that they are 
quite beneath them, and properly belong to the 
vulgar, but to the erroneous idea that they involve 
a life of hardship, pain and drudgery. Whereas 
the truth is, that there are no labors which taken 
together are more easy or more healthful ; and, if 
properly conducted, there are few which give more 
freedom as well as more leisure for recreation and 
study. 

Should the period arrive, in the history of our 
world, when household management shall be re- 
garded as indispensable to a correct female educa- 
tion, and when no young lady shall any more 
think of attaining to years of maturity without a 
knowledge both of the theory and practice of 
housewifery, than she does without a knowledge 
of reading and writing, this unreasonable prejudice 
against cookery, washing, mending, he, which are 
important parts of this employment, will cease to 
exist ; and one powerful motive which now exists, 
either concealed or avowed, for employing others, 
or at least, for treating them as our inferiors, will 
be almost entirely removed. Is it too much to 
hope that such a period will sooner or later arrive ? 
Or is Christianity destined to effect but a partial 
reformation of humanity — and to obtain but half a 
triumph ? 



32 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

To meet the now growing belief that house- 
keeping does not belong to the mother, necessarily — 
that its details and duties are not only irksome and 
hateful in their nature, but absolutely incompatible 
with hers — and to show as clearly as possible that 
they are not incompatible, but that the employ- 
ment is much more simple, more pleasant, more 
rational, and more useful than is sometimes sup- 
posed, is at present a desideratum. It is with a 
view to this end that I have made the attempt to 
present, not merely the facts and principles of 
housewifery, but its philosophy and its dignity. 
And how much soever this whole matter is over- 
looked by some, contemned by many, and regarded 
as more or less a matter of hap-hazard by nearly 
all, I am fully confident that if there be a profes- 
sion or occupation, which is, in its nature, truly 
dignified, and to which philosophy and philosophic 
instruction are more necessary or more applicable 
than to almost any other, it is to that of house- 
keeping. It is, I repeat it, a science ; and though 
its practice should be chiefly confined to the family 
or maternal school, it should be recognized, at 
least in theory, in all schools for females, from the 
highest to the lowest — in Boston or in Franconia. 

It is high time that this noble profession, lying 
as it does, like agriculture and horticulture, at the 
very foundation of human happiness, were disa- 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 33 

bused. It is high time the miserable notion that it 
is vulgar or mean, were discountenanced. It is 
quite time it were taken by wise and discreet 
mothers into their own hands, instead of being com- 
mitted to those who have no interest in it ; or at 
least no such interest as the mother has — a desire 
to promote by it, the highest well being of hus- 
band and children. Say what we will, it is the 
mother, and she alone, who can ever be expected 
to become the intelligent, the truly benevolent, or 
the truly skilful house-keeper. 

We talk of the importance of legislation — and 
very properly. What republican does not admit, 
and — now-a-days at least — feel the importance of 
good and salutary laws ? And yet where is there 
to be found a more efficient legislator than the 
house-keeper ? " Let me make the ballads of a 
nation, and you may make its laws," said a person 
who understood well the tendency of human na- 
ture, and the causes which silently and almost 
imperceptibly operate to make human character 
what it is. But I would say, rather — Let me 
have the control of the nursery — let me direct the 
sweeping, the washing, the fire-building, the cook- 
ing, the conversation, &;c., of the infant and the 
child — and I care comparatively little whether the 
laws are made by one man, by a few men, or by 
many men. I care comparatively little, as to the 
3 



34 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

results on human happiness, for a single generation 
or even a century, whether the government be 
that of a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democ- 
racy. If the human being is trained to obey, first 
from habit, and afterwards from a sense of duty, 
the laws and relations of the human constitution 
along with the laws divine, that being cannot, as a 
general rule, be very miserable, whether its resi- 
dence be America, Burmah, Japan, Otaheite, 
Egypt, Soudan, Siberia or Greenland. But in 
proportion as an individual is not thus trained, will 
his condition be unhappy, and life itself seem to 
him, at times, but a doubtful blessing, though he 
have the clear sky of New England, or inhale the 
soft air of Italy, and the balmy breezes of Ceylon ; 
or though he should be admitted to revel in paradise. 
Order is heaven's first law, it is said ; but without 
this order in the httle world within, of which the 
external world is but the transcript, there can be 
no heaven here, and I had almost said — and might 
have said it, so far as the creature whom we call 
man is concerned — there can be none hereafter. 

We are accustomed to esteem wise and able 
counsellors. We do not always understand the 
laws framed by our legislators, in all their bearings 
on particular cases, and so we desire information, 
and sometimes direction, in questions which come 
'jp in regard to rights and duties. Hence the host 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 35 

of lawyers among us. And they are not without 
their use. The common prejudice against their 
honesty and integrity is ahogether unreasonable. 
I believe a large majority of them are high- 
minded and honorable men. Perhaps there are, 
not unfrequently, too many. Still, I repeat it, a 
a proportion is highly useful, taxed as the rest of 
the community may be and must be — as in the 
case of all other arrangements for the removal of 
the evils entailed on us by ignorance, error or infir- 
mity — to support or sustain them. But what is 
the influence of the most able counsellor among 
us — I care not if he is a Webster, a Henry, or 
a Phillips — compared with the influence of the 
house-keeper ? Her counsels, overlooked as they 
often are, whether she be the mother or not, have 
an influence in society, the sum total of which can 
never be over-estimated. She can establish what 
the law and the lawyer may labor forever in vain 
to accomplish ; she can prevent, by her daily 
efforts, what, if not early prevented, no law or 
lawyers can ever cure — though their influence 
could be brought to bear seventy thousand years 
instead of seventy. 

We are accustomed — most of us at least — to 
think favorably of the influences of the christian 
ministiy. Though I am very far from being, in 
the cant language of those who complain so much 



36 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

of cant among us, of the number of the priest 
ridden, I ani free to admit, that notwithstanding the 
clerical abuses in other parts of the world, and 
more especially in other ages, there never yet has 
been — since the creation — such a band of holy, 
self-denying friends of human improvement, eleva- 
tion, and emancipation, as the Protestant ministry 
of the United States, especially of New England ; 
and for one, instead of diminishing their influence, 
I would increase it, at least thirty fold. Instead 
of one of these godly men and one true friend of 
civil and religious light and liberty to every thou- 
sand or two thousand persons, I would gladly have 
a minister with a society in every school district, 
and would cheerfully contribute my full proportion 
of what was really necessary for his comfortable 
and even liberal support. I would gladly see him 
spending his time, his talents and his strength, as a 
father in the midst of a hundred and fifty or two 
hundred persons, including men, women and chil- 
dren, and aspiring to no higher earthly glory than 
to be, not the brilliant orator among them, but the 
humble instrument of leading them, by his labors, 
his example, and his prayers, back to the bliss of 
Eden. 

And yet, after all these concessions in favor of 
ministers and the ministerial office, what can the 
minister do for the moral, the social, the religious 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 37 

elevation of mankind, without the aid of the house- 
keeper ? He may watch, and labor, and pray for 
the soul ; but the house-keeper can do more than 
all this. She presides over, and moulds, and 
shapes. She forms the " house " the soul " lives 
in ;" and, in this way, almost entirely directs the 
motions and tendencies of the soul itself. What 
can a minister do for a person who continually 
breathes the impure atmosphere of filthy apart- 
ments ; is drenched, daily, with hot, compound or 
over-stimulating drinks ; or fed with hot, oily, indi- 
gestible or poisonous food ; and whose very solids 
and fluids, in every " nook and corner," are, as it 
were, defiled ? Worse, if possible, even than all 
this, what can he do to give a proper current to 
the thoughts and feelings, when every thought, and 
feeling, and motion which is kindled in the kitchen 
or the parlor, savors of some sensual gratification — ■. 
good eating, good drinking, fashionable amuse- 
ments, fashionable dress, equipage or money ? 

Many of us are accustomed to think favorably 
of christian missions, domestic or foreign ; and 
well we may. That individual, male or female, 
old or young, high or low, rich or poor, of much or 
of little influence, who does not feel the force of 
•the command — " Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the gospel to every creature " — that is, do 
all in your power to extend it to every human 



38 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

being — and who cannot say with Paul, " Wo is 
me if I preach not the gospel," at least by ex- 
ample — is not more than half awake, as yet, to 
the true dignity of human nature ; and that indir 
vidual who does not, in this view, sympathize with 
modern missionary efforts, whatever may be the 
incidental or occasional mistakes or defects of 
those who direct or those who prosecute them, has 
not, in my view, become as yet, thoroughly imbued 
with the true gospel spirit — the spirit of Christ. 

And yet what mission, foreign or domestic, has 
higher claims, even as a christian enterprise, than 
the mission of the house-keeper ? To her is 
entrusted the development — provided she is at the 
same time both mother and house-keeper — of the 
buds of character ; the first lineaments of self- 
denial, self government and self-sacrifice. Nay, 
more ; she is herself required to exercise a degree 
of self-government and self-sacrifice, which is sel- 
dom if ever required of him who goes to India or 
the Sandwich Islands. 

I do not mean by this, that the self-sacrifice of 
the foreign missionary is not sometimes greater 
than that of the true christian missionary in the 
household ; but only that it is not so constant nor 
so great in the aggregate. It costs, indeed, a most 
painful struggle to leave one's friends, and relations, 
and country, to be consigned for life to — we know 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 39 

not what, till Providence reveals it in the event. 
The breaking away, even from the cold and sterile 
shores of our New England, is almost like tearing 
the heart away from the living system ; and the 
pangs felt on reaching a foreign inhospitable shore, 
and landing or preparing to land amid a group of 
half naked, half fed, half brutal savages, is un- 
known, and must remain unknown except to those 
who have felt them. But there is something in 
human nature, independent even of divine influ- 
ence, which enables it, in emergencies like these, 
to bear up. " As our day is, so is our strength." 
But these great trials excepted, we are less seldom 
called to self-denial abroad, perhaps, than at home. 
We can pursue what we deem a rational course 
of eating, drinking, dressing, conversing and acting, 
so far at least as we have the means of doing 
it, without subjecting ourselves to the " wise 
speeches " or the ridicule of those about us ; as 
we should be, if wo were at home. 

But if in being missionaries at home we have 
fewer great trials or emergencies, they are yet 
constant and almost unremitted ; and who that can 
even govern himself occasionally in great matters^ 
has not found himself perpetually overcome in 
smaller things, and perpetually falling from his 
steadfastness ? But of all persons in the world, 
who is more tried than the house-keeper, and the 



40 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

director and guide of some half a dozen children ? 
Are they not continually looking to her for an 
example ? Does she not know this ? ' Does she 
not know that her every error — in eating, drinking, 
conversing — is educating them ? Does she not 
know that the quality, quantity, he, of food and 
drink, drawn in by the child at the breast, tends not 
merely to propagate danger and error, but to 
affect her own temper and character, modifying or 
affecting her example ? Does she not know that 
she has not a child under her care, but is treading 
at every moment on the verge of destruction, 
physical and moral ? And if watchfulness and 
prayer, and self-denial and self-sacrifice are neces- 
sary anywhere in the wide world, is it not here ? 

Every circumstance — I had almost said every 
thought and feeling — of the mother and all others 
around the child, is, in every waking moment of 
its early life, giving it a tendency to diverge from 
the desired point, the perfection of its nature. 
The whole current of fashion, in almost every 
family and out of it, is in opposition to the best 
interests of human nature ; and I have never 
yet known the parent who had the moral courage 
to act up to all the true interests of her child, in 
opposition to the standard which fashion has arbi- 
trarily set up, even so far as she knew what her 
duty was. All, so far as I know, yield more- or 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 41 

less to the temptations with which they are sur- 
rounded. Now it is the moral courage to do right 
as far as we hnow, as well as to seek for farther 
light, which I deem more scarce than a spirit 
which would lead us to become missionaries on a 
scale where we should be more exposed and 
known as such. Or in other words, it seems to 
me that it requires more self-sacrifice to be a mis- 
sionary to a household than to a foreign country. 

Nor is the influence of the house-keeper in the 
formation of character, by any means wholly nega- 
tive. Not only is a habit of self-denial required 
to be attended to at every step of her own life 
and the lives of those whom she is forming, with a 
,view to save herself and them from loss and suffer- 
ing, but also with a view to train them up for God 
and for their country. In vain, or almost in vain, 
may other efforts be made, if the proper work be 
not done here, in the family. And could it be well 
done here, for a few generations — could the nations 
which have not yet embraced Christianity but see a 
race of such christians as might under God be reared 
were the foundations properly placed — we might 
then hope the labors of foreign missionaries would 
begin to produce their appropriate and expected 
fiaiits. The Jew, the Mahometan and the Pagan, 
might then be led to say — not as now, in irony, 
but in sincerity—" See how these christians love 



42 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

one another ; " and what they would see and 
admire as truly lovely, they would not be slow to 
examine and ultimately to embrace. 

How great, in this view, the dignity of the 
housewife — not, indeed, the pseudo character to 
whom this appellation is sometimes awarded, but 
she who is the housewife indeed — such a house- 
wife as Solomon describes, and as the future mil- 
lennial ages of the world are destined to realize ! 
What can she not do, who, with the light, and 
truth, and love of a servant of the Most High, and 
with the bodies, and minds, and souls of men — 
from the very first — committed almost entirely to 
her charge, shall do for them what God and 
holy angels and holy men expect ? It is astonish- 
ing beyond astonishment, that men made in the 
image of God, should have hitherto, as if with one 
consent, contrived to render house-keeping dis- 
reputable, and those who attend to it with their 
own hands as vulgar. Nothing can be more 
directly at variance with the truth — nothing, or at 
least hardly anything, more in the way of human 
improvement. 

Much is said in our day — and too much cannot 
certainly be done — in the way of promoting reform 
in prisons. But how much more can the house- 
keeper do — as will probably be seen hereafter—^ 
in the way of preventing the necessity not only of 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 43 

legislation and lawyers, but of crimes and prisons. 
It is because children have first been prisoners in 
the domestic circle — in body, mind and soul — that 
they afterwards become state prisoners. Their 
appetites become perverted by exciting food and 
drink, and by this means, and by means of bad 
associations with domestics or others, their minds 
and souls become greatly injured, till they are 
ready to yield to and become the slaves of every 
temptation, and the votaries of every bad habit. 
And thus are they educated, and thus do they edu- 
cate themselves, to vice and crime ; and thus are 
our prisons and dungeons filled with convicts. 
How happy will be the day when there will be no 
such thing known as two classes of persons in 
families, a higher and a lower — jailers and prisoners 
— but when all the family, however numerous and 
how little soever united by ties of consanguinity, 
will be equal and free, dwelling together, eating 
and drinking together, and whether of one nation 
or another, always uniting around the same domestic 
altar. 

How happy the time when no restraint will be 
necessary to keep children from mixing, too much, 
with those who would degrade them or lead them 
into temptation ; when there will be but one com- 
mon interest in the whole family circle ; and when 
children will begin to regard father and mother, 



44 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

and brother and sister, and adopted brother and 
sister — if such there must be — not in the relation 
of jailers and prisoners, but in the relation of truest 
and best friends ! 

We have Moral Reform Societies. But a right 
early management would prevent the necessity of 
all such associations. If every house-keepei»knew 
her own dignity, and would live up to it, impurity 
and licentiousness would soon cease. The same 
bad habits, physical and moral, which fill our 
prisons, fill also our houses of ill-fame. Confec- 
tionary, and bad food, and bad drinks, and uncon- 
trolled passions, and misplaced affections — all of 
which might be banished, were house-keeping 
restored to its primitive dignity — are the prolific 
source of half the licentiousness with which our 
earth is afflicted, and changed from an Eden to a 
scene of mourning, lamentation and wo. 

We boast of our literary institutions — our infant 
schools, our common schools, our high schools, our 
institutes, our colleges, our universities. But what 
is the influence of these, excellent as it may be, 
compared with that of the kitchen and parlor? 
Say what we will, it is here — exactly here — ^that 
our characters, even in a literary point of view, are 
determined. I would not SB.y formed ; for of this, 
I am not so sure. But I have never yet known, 
-personally— others may have known such instances 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 45 

)f a lover of knowledge or moral progress, who 
was not initiated into this love by those who had 
the control of his early infancy and his childhood. 
On the contraiy, I could fill half this volume with 
anecdotes of those in whom the seeds of that love 
of literature and science which they subsequently 
manifested, was sown in early infancy by that 
maternal teacher whose influence is, after all, most 
awakening, most impressive, and most permanent. 

Were it left to my choice to say which of two 
things the world should have — the right sort of 
household management and education, with no 
school instruction whatever, or the best sort of 
school education of every grade, but without any- 
thing done in the household beyond what is now 
done by nine tenths if not nineteen twentieths of 
mankind — I should not hesitate a moment to decide 
on the former. Such is the value I attach to the 
domestic institution and the family school ; and 
such are my conceptions of the native dignity of 
house-keeping. ^ 

I do not mean by all this that the house-keeper 
is to have, necessarily, her set hours and set lessons 
of instruction, though I wish her to have time 
for even these. But I mean that she should so 
manage in all concerns of the household — and 
these it is which, as I shall never cease to repeat, 
go far to form character, the great object and 



46 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

end of education — that the results, along with the 
aid of those who cooperate with her, shall do more 
for the children which form a part of it, than all 
else which is done for them, directly or indirectly, 
in the whole process of their forming stage of 
progress. But is not that the truest, noblest 
literary institution in the world — nay, is it not more 
than all others — which secures all this as its inevi- 
table results ? It certainly is so ; it cannot be 
otherwise. 

Let me not be understood as saying, that in the 
present state of things, every housewife who had 
leisure to do things as she ought, and to control 
things as she ought, would do them right. There 
would be still, as there now is, both good and bad 
education. But even as the general knowledge 
of housewives now is, the common belief that the 
family is more important, because more influential 
on character than all other schools, would be in 
favor of human happiness, provided they would 
adopt, as speedily as may be, those principles, and 
that rational system of house-keeping, which it is 
the object of this work to recommend and incul- 
cate. 

Lastly, we value highly — ^but probably not too 
highly — the services of the worthy physician. He 
is one of our most intimate and bosom friends ; and 
we are generally ready to award him a seat by the 



DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 47 

side of him who labors to remove or prevent the 
maladies of our souls. But if " prevention is better 
than cure " — if, according to the motto of one of 
our medical journals, " the best part of the medical 
art is the art of avoiding pain," who shall say that 
the maternal house-keeper, who holds, as it were, 
in her hands, the keys of life and health, and can 
prevent more pain — I was going to say infinitely 
more — than the ablest physician can cure, shall 
not be considered as at least a fellow being, and a 
fellow laborer in the common cause of humanity ? 
I claim not for woman a place which does not ^, 
belong to her ; but I do claim that though she is 
not, and cannot be, and should not be a physician, 
in every sense of the term, yet she is, and should 
be, more to every family than the physician — in- 
comparably more. 

Every female should be trained to the angelic 
art of managing properly the sick. It is strange 
that in view of the common maxim, that a good 
nurse is worth more than a physician, we should 
have so few professional nurses, male and female, 
among us. Yet if we had a dozen of these, in all 
parts of our country, for each physician, it would 
not absolve woman from the universal obligation 
of attending to the subject. There is no female in 
the wide world — above all, no one who sustains 
the proud prerogative of being a mother, to say 



48 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

nothing of the house-keeper — that may not be 
called to watch and nurse the sick ; nay, that will 
not be so, almost inevitably. But how many lives 
have I seen destroyed, through the ignorance or 
the over-kindness — usually both combined — of the 
mother ? 

I will not dwell longer, here, on the details of this 
subject. To show the superiority of the mother 
who is a house-keeper, to the physician, whom we 
everywhere so highly esteem, would be to follow 
her through her whole course of the physical man- 
agement of her child, in sickness and in health ; 
and to observe every step she takes, above all the 
rest, in the processes of cookery. This would be 
a task which I cannot attempt here. If I have 
done little more than to assert the dignity of the 
housewife, this at least is something. I trust, how- 
ever, that subsequent chapters will do something 
in the way o{ proving it. I trust they will present 
some views on the duties of the house-keeper, that 
have not hitherto been current among us. Let not 
the reader, however, cry heresy, simply because 
the opinions presented are new. Truth is truth 
still, whether it be old or new, and whether it be 
fashionable or unfashionable. 



CHAPTER II. 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

1. Obey the dictates of conscience, 2. Dare to disobey the 
mandates of fashion. 3. Dignify your profession. 4. Keep 
the house yourself, as much as possible. 5. Whatever is 
worth doing, is worth doing well. 6. Importance of se- 
curing the aid of the husband and others. 7. Anecdote 
and reflections. 

The first resolution of a young house-keeper 
should be, to do what she beheves she ought to do ; 
in other words, to obey the dictates of her own 
conscience. I care not so much what other quali- 
fications she possesses ; if she has not this primary 
one, she can never succeed in discharging, per- 
fectly, the duties of her profession. I do not, 
indeed, advise her to pay no attention to the 
opinions of others. She should have some regard 
to opinion, public and individual ; these should be 
taken into the account, in making up a judgment 
as to her own proper course ; but when her 
own course and -duty are clear, and the time has 
arrived for action, let her act according to the 
dictates of her conscience. 
4 



50 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

There are those who are swayed by fashion. 
They do not merely take fashion into the account, 
when making up a judgment what their duty is ; 
but even after the decision is imade, perhaps in the 
fear of God, they dare not execute it fully, lest 
it should be unfashionable ; lest " my lord " or 
"my lady" should look sideways at them. Such 
housewives will never succeed well. They must 
resolve to do what they believe to be right, in 
view of all circumstances and consequences — and 
fashion among the rest ; but the decision once 
made what duty is, let them go forward. Let 
there be no misgivings — no fears. Persons who 
do thus may control the fashions. Those who 
tremble to execute the cool decisions of their own 
sober judgment, lest it should be, after all, unpopu- 
lar, will be the most miserable of slaves. They 
will be " hewers of wood and drawers of water " 
to a tyrant whose only law is that of caprice — and 
whose service is spiritual death. 

The house-keeper, as I have already said, must 
have correct notions of the dignity of her duties. 
She is not ministering to the wants of a few bodies, 
considered merely as bodies ; but through these 
bodies to the wants of immortal souls. I am some- 
times tistonished to find the employment of house- 
keeping rated so low. It would seem as if a world 
where employments are valued inversely, according 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 51 

to their uselessness, must be turned topsy-turvy. 
Yet such a world is ours. The cuhivator of the 
soil and the keeper of the house, are considered as 
mere drudges, nigh akin to the domestic animals 
of whicb they have the charge ; while the useless 
or almost useless being, that struts about doing 
nothing and producing nothing, either by the labor 
of body or mind — he is the true man, the man of 
value. He may, perhaps, have a soul. 

These things ought not so to be. Young house- 
keeper, you must resolve, that so far as in you lies, 
they shall not be so. But in order to this, learn 
to reverence yourself and respect your profession. 
Make no unworthy concessions of inferiority. Just 
so surely as the soul takes its hues — yea, its char- 
acter too — from the condition of the clay tenement 
in which it dwells, just so surely is your profession 
that of determining what the condition of this clay 
tenement shall be ; and it is one of the noblest 
that can adorn or exalt humanity. 

Away, then, from your mind, every unworthy 
idea concerning domestic life. Away the feeling, 
that your occupation is an inferior one. Fools 
may call it so ; fools have called it so. If you 
were mere automatons — if amid the din of pots 
and kettles, it were not possible for you to think or 
feel — the case would be altered. But the service 
which I propose to the house-rkeeper is not a 



52 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

slavery to her employment. She has something 
more to do than to attend to pots and kettles. She 
has the temporal, and, to some extent, the eternal 
well being of those around her at her disposal. 
She has character at her disposal. Her work, in 
short, is education — the physical education and 
management of a rising family. It is more, even ; 
she cannot be the physical without being the intel- 
lectual and the moral educator of her family. 
This I trust I shall make more plain hereafter. 

One important resolution of a young house- 
keeper should be, to keep the house herself. Let 
her dispense, as much as possible, with all aid, 
except that of her children and husband. I know, 
indeed, that many an individual is so situated that 
she must have additional help ; but let her not 
consider it a privilege, but a misfortune ; and let 
her embrace, with joy, the first opportunity of 
going back to the simplicity of nature. 

The young house-keeper should not only re- 
solve — she should execute her resolves. Let it be 
understood, once for all, that it will be of as little 
value to resolve merely, if that should be the last 
of it, as it will be to read this book, and yet give 
no heed to its sayings. The Germans have a 
proverb — " He is the wise man, not who tells what 
he intends to do, but who does it." In like man- 
ner, she is not the wise house-keeper who suffers 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 53 

her resolves to be mere resolves ; but who puts 
every worthy resolve into immediate execution. 

Let her remember, too, that whatever is worth 
doing, is worth doing well. In this point of view 
there are no little things pertaining to housewifery. 
Indeed, as it is in morals, so it often is in physical 
matters, the little things of life become, by their 
results — their bearing on human character and 
human happiness — the truly great things. 

She is not the worthy house-keeper who slights 
this or that duty, solely because it is a small one. 
She who would come up to the dignity of her 
occupation must, for the time, throw her whole 
soul into her employment. No matter how trifling 
it may, at the moment, appear ; let her call to her 
aid her general principle — Whatever is worth doing, 
is worth doing well ; and let it invest her labors 
with their real value. It is said of Dr. Goldsmith, 
that he " always seemed to do best that which he 
was doing." This is what is needed by the young 
house-keeper. 

I have said that the young house-keeper should, 
as much as possible, keep the house herself. If she 
has the right sort of husband, she will, however, 
receive great aid from him. The husband can do 
an immense deal to render the labors of his wife 
lighter or more severe. He can bring more or less 
of dirt into the house. He can assist more or less 



54 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

in teaching the children to be cleanly. He can 
bring in more or less of wood and water. All 
these, and a thousand more of the little, almost 
nameless things of life, can be so managed as 
greatly to facilitate or retard the progress of the 
house-keeper, according to the disposition. Wo to 
th^ housewife who has a husband that refuses not 
only to help her, but to take any pains not to hin- 
der her, or increase, unnecessarily, her labors ! 

I will not undertake to say how far a husband 
can go, in any particular case, in the way of ren- 
dering his wife assistance, without interference with 
his peculiar duties. But I do say he can go very 
far. I have been acquainted in hundreds of fami- 
lies — intimately so in many — and I can truly say, 
I never yet saw the husband who assisted to the 
extent he might have done. I have never yet 
seen one who did not leave undone many little 
things which he ought to have done, and who did 
not do some things which ought to have been 
omitted. 

You will say, perhaps, that I am out of my 
sphere, just now ; and that I am writing for hus- 
bands. By no means. I am only telling the house- 
keeper what some men are. Is not this needful 
knowledge ? Is it not especially so, if along with 
the knowledge of what they are, I try to tell you 
what they should be, and what is and what is not 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 55 

in your power, In regard to rendering them what 
they should be ? If instead of thinking me out of 
riiy sphere, and returning me thanks, you set about 
complaining of me, my case will be a sad one in- 
deed ; for I shall be sure to get no thanks from the 
husband, for reveahng our secrets. 

Let me tell you, however, be the hazard what it 
may, that you may train your husband to help you, 
if you will begin right; or you may, at your option, 
train him to hinder you. I have witnessed both 
sorts of training, and the consequences of both. — I 
repeat it, your husband will help you much or little, 
according as you begin with' him. And so will 
your children. 

The way to begin right is to talk the matter 
over. He wishes, as. much as you — at least this, is 
commonly the case — to live independently. He 
does not want, more than you, the trouble or the 
expense of domestics. Tell him of the importance 
and even necessity that you should receive, from 
time to time, a little of his aid, when he is about 
the house. Tell him, moreover, in these moments 
of calm conversation, what little fixtures, conven- 
iences, &c., you need. Do not wait till the mo- 
ment you feel the inconveniences of not having 
them begin to press upon you, and then scold 
about it. This will not accomplish your object ; 
at least, it will not do it in the best manner. 



56 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

It is not difficult, where affection is mutual, to 
convince a husband of the importance of these kind 
attentions, which cost him so little, but which are 
so valuable to yourself. The great difficulty is, to 
form in him the habit of affording them. To this 
end you must not hesitate to tell him plainly but 
kindly what you need. More than this ; you must 
set the example of assistance by aiding him. There 
are a thousand little things which you can perform 
' for him, from time to time. See then that you 
are not slow to perform them, and that you do it 
cheerfully. 

Some men are trained in such a manner as to 
need little training afterward. Others are trained 
never to do anything in the house, at all. With 
the last you will have great trouble ; but have 
courage, for your difficulties may all be surmounted. 

I knew an excellent housewife whose husband 
had never been trained to render the least assist- 
ance to the wife, in any of the little things about 
the house. He scarcely knew how to do so much 
as to bring in a pail of water. If requested to do 
it, he did not hesitate, but did it cheerfully ; but as 
the request was seldom made, the assistance was 
seldom afforded. 

The first months of matrimony at length over, 
the requests for aid, instead of increasing, were 
diminished ; and along with the unfrequency of the 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 57 

calls on the husband came an increasing disinclina- 
tion to comply with them when made. The result, 
in short, was, that it cost so much urging to get 
aid from him, that the effort was finally given up. 

I have known this young housewife, when toil- 
ing very hard, over her wash-bench or elsewhere, 
when she really needed a little help, and when her 
husband could have afforded it as well as not — I 
have known her, I say, to leave her work, and go 
for wood or water, or into the field for vege- 
tables to boil for dinner. All this 1 have known 
done, not only for a year or two, but for many 
years. I have, moreover, seen the father and one 
or two sons, almost as large as himself, sit in the 
house, doing nothing, perhaps, except holding a 
little loose or unimportant conversation with each 
other or with some neighbor ; and I have known 
them sit for hours, while the mother, fully and 
laboriously employed directly before their faces, 
would often leave her work to perform little tasks 
that ought not to have been required of her in any 
case, and much more in the circumstances I have 
mentioned. She would not ask for aid ; and as it 
was never volunteered, the sons grew up in all the 
stupidity to which the father had been educated ; 
and indeed to a stupidity still worse. They 
seemed not to know that they had it in their 
power to do anything for the mother. 



58 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

Now it is difficult to know which to blame most 
in such a case as this ; but it is impossible for me 
to help pitying rather the most, the house-keeper. 
And yet I am quite sure her situation, that of a 
complete drudge, might have been avoided. She 
might have trained her husband — and afterward 
her sons — to a course entirely different. Though 
she had an iron constitution, she is now, at sixty, 
worn out ; and worn out, too, for want of the little 
attentions of which I have been speaking. 

Let me say again, still more confidently, that 
such a course is entirely uncalled for and unneces- 
sary. JMore than this, it is wrong. This house- 
wife of whom I have spoken, never attempted — I 
venture to affirm it — to discuss the subject with 
her husband, in her whole life. She performed 
the whole household labor of a family consisting 
of herself, a husband, and four or five children, 
with few conveniences and with no foreign help ; 
in addition to which she spun hundreds of runs of 
yarn, and wove her hundreds of yards of cloth 
every year. She performed, in fact, what is now 
considered — when we remember at what disadvan- 
tages it was done — at least enough for two com- 
mon females ; and she did it well. There was no 
slighting of her work, nor any neglect of cleanli- 
ness. All her washing, ironing, baking, brewing, 
making, mending, &c., was performed with the 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 59 

Utmost neatness. Beyond even this, she found 
time for a great deal of reading and some visiting. 
She also found time for reading with and instruct- 
ing her children. I do not know of more than 
one housewife in the whole neighborhood who did 
more than she in the education of her family — for 
here, too, she was without aid or cooperation — or 
who labored in this department with more success. 

I know well the old maxim, it is better to wear 
out than to rust out ; and there is much of truth 
in it. But we are not required even to wear out 
unnecessarily. Nay, more, we have no right to do 
it. It is as much our duty to God to preserve our 
health and strength as long as possible, consistently 
with the reasonable discharge of our duties, as it is 
to preserve either of them at all. But this house- 
wife erred not only in wearing herself out prema- 
turely, and shortening her life some fifteen or 
twenty years, but she did a most lElagrant wrong 
to her own family. For to say nothing of her 
husband and of the wrong she did to him by leav- 
ing him to wrong her, as she did, she was the 
means of giving forth to the world two young men 
of the same habits, and liable to treat their wives 
with the same neglect. 

We may thus see how easily the omission to do 
right may slide into a positive wrong. It happens, 
moreover, in the case I have mentioned, that the 



60 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

results to the sons, are not merely conjectural or 
even theoretical. Neither of the two is predis- 
posed, in his daily habits, to depart from the way 
in which he has been trained ; and if a tendency 
to such a disposition is ever happily evinced, it is 
all a matter of effort, and not of ease and cheer- 
fulness. 

I have dwelt the longer on this topic, because 
it involves a very great evil, and because I do not 
remember to have seen it mentioned elsewhere. 
It seems to me to be regarded as a little thing, or a 
heresy, and on that account it is generally over- 
looked. 



.W_. 



CHAPTER III. 



HAVING A PLAN. 

Why a plan is indispensable. Hour of rising. Arrange- 
ments. Breakfast. Particular advantages. Mrs, Parkes'fl 
opinion. Time gained, how to be employed. 

" Order is heaven's first law," says one of the 
poets ; and it is, or should be, the first law of 
that place which properly managed would, of all 
other places below the sun, most nearly resemble 
heaven. 

But to have order, there must be plan. Here, 
too, more, perhaps, than anywhere else, is it impor- 
tant for the housewife to consult with her husband*. 
What can she do, in this respect, without him ? 
And if there are children in the family — as I have 
all along taken for granted — this circumstance ren- 
ders mutual consultation still more indispensable. 

I know a plan is difificult. So difficult, indeed, 
is it, that no plan is often formed by the house- 
keeper ; and of plans which are formed, not one in 
ten is long adhered to. The departures from a 
plan formed, soon become frequent, and, as it was 



62 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

made without taking the circumstances, and wishes, 
and feelings of the whole family fully into the 
account, it forms at length the exception, and not 
the general rule ; and is ultimately in danger of 
being regarded as a mere nullity. 

And yet, difficult as it is, its necessity — I repeat 
it — is imperative. This living at hap-hazard, in 
famiUes, is ruinous ; not so much, indeed, to health 
as to the intellect and the morals. It is bad 
enough, however, for either ; and is one of the 
errors in house-keeping which should be strictly 
and sedulously avoided. 

I do not believe there is one husband in ten, 
who would not try to conform to a reasonable 
plan — and more than this, the housewife need 
not ask of him — when proposed and urged by one 
whom he loves ; and when, above all, he finds her 
rigidly conforming to it herself. I say conformity 
is all she need ask of him, but I believe she would 
gain more than this. I believe that thousands of 
families fall into ruin for want of plan or system on 
the part of the housewife, while the head of the 
family remains ignorant of the cause ; but I believe, 
too, there are some sensible men, who, without 
knowing — for want of experience — the value of 
order and system, would so approve of it at first 
sight, and be so cheered by the example of a wife, 
that they would conform, at once, to almost any- 



HAVING A PLAN. 63^ 

thing which should be proposed, at least long 
enough to make a fair experiment. 

The hour of rising should be assigned for each — 
for the husband, the housewife, the children, the 
domestics, (if domestics there must needs be ;) 
and it should be distinctly and cordially assented 
to. That hour should be early. I do not under- 
take to assign the precise time which is adapted 
to different persons, ages, habits, &£c. ; this is of 
less consequence than that there should he a time, 
and that it should be as seldom as possible deviated 
from. The master of the family, as he is supposed 
to need" less sleep than any of its members, is the 
proper person to rise first ; but if there be that 
energy wanting — that readiness to cooperate and 
carry on the plan — which may sometimes exist, 
and if, too, the thing be perfectly understood and 
agreed on, the house-keeper may be first. 

There is no difficulty of awaking at a desired 
hour of the morning, when one has a strong motive 
for it ; but it is to be regretted that when we sleep 
thus, on tip-toe as it were, our sleep is not so 
sound or so refreshing as under other circum- 
stances. I therefore prefer that there should be 
some ingenious contrivance, to awaken a house- 
keeper at first — perhaps an alarm clock, if nothing 
better should present — until the habit is effectually 
formed ; after which, she will find little difficulty 



64 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

of awaking when she wishes to do so. The 
power of habit, in this respect, is well known. At 
the appointed time, she should rise and call up the 
rest. 

The hour for breakfast — and for devotion, if that 
precede breakfast — should also be assigned ; and 
when thus fixed, should not be delayed except on 
special occasions, and these should be exceedingly 
rare. Better in all respects, to sit down a few 
minutes before the time, than one minute or even 
one half minute later ; — better for the body, better 
for the mind, and better for the whole character. 
The same remarks may be applied to every meal 
during the day. 

The time to be spent at breakfast should be 
fixed, as well as that to be spent at every other 
meal ; and the allowance should be more liberal 
than is common in our country. It ought to be at 
least half an hour each for breakfast and supper, 
and an hour for dinner. But whether it should be 
less or more, let it be fixed ; and except in emer- 
gencies, as in the arrival of a friend, or the occur- 
rence of an accident, let it seldom if ever be 
departed from. 

Hours, also, should be allotted by the good 
house-keeper, to every kind of work which is 
known to recur statedly in connection with meals, 
or daily in connection with the arrival of particular 



HAVING A PLAN. 65 

times or seasons. The hour for evening devotions 
and for retiring to rest should be equally definite. 

There are some individuals who, for want of 
plan, labor twice as hard to effect a given object 
as others. They pass through life in this manner — 
they are mere drudges, and yet seem to get noth- 
ing done. They are apt, moreover, to pass through 
life fretting. Their neighbors get along so easily, 
as if life were mere pastime, while they — poor 
unfortunates ! — must toil on without hope or pros- 
pect of relief, except by death. 

There are not a few who, with comparatively 
little to do, seem to be always in a hurry, and yet 
are always too late. They are a little too late 
about rising ; then a little too late about break- 
fast ; then too late about something else. It is as 
if they had lost half an hour in the morning, and 
were running and fretting all day to overtake it. 

There are some advantages of early rising 
which are not easily explained, though they may 
be stated. The individual who rises at six in the 
morning, and goes to bed at ten in the evening, 
will, with the same amount of labor, have far less 
of fatigue, all other things being equal, than the per- 
son who rises at seven and goes to bed at eleven. 
Why is it so ? Both are supposed to be employed 
sixteen hours, and both sleep eight hours, and they 
are supposed to have equal health and strength, 
5 



66 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

and to labor equally hard. Why, then, I repeat it, 
should there be a difference ? 

She who rises at six will have less of head- 
ache, and thirst, and fever. Every person is, 
indeed, more or less feverish at evening. The 
pulse is more frequent, and there is more of thirst 
and lassitude than in the morning. In the robust, 
it is true, the difference is scarcely perceptible ; 
but it nevertheless exists in a greater or less 
degree. When we do not eat late suppers, how- 
ever, or have too much company, or sit up beyond 
eight or nine o'clock, sleep restores us ; and we 
rise the next morning in our wonted health. We 
rise cheerfully, too; there is less of the feeling 
that' we have not yet slept enough ; there is less 
of headache or thirst ; there is not so bad a taste 
in the mouth ; and there is little of that disgust of 
life, which, at this hour, so often creeps in upon 
the house-keeper, and makes her feel as if she 
could not possibly get up and resume her daily 
round of duties. As housewives, in general, now 
manage themselves and their concerns, there will 
indeed be unpleasant feelings in any circumstances; 
but the course I have recommended will greatly 
diminish their number and their intensity. 

I would not dwell longer on the necessity of 
" having a plan," if I did not see housewives 
almost everywhere suffering for the want of it. 



HAVING A PLAN. 67 

They labor, often, twice as hard as is necessary, 
and wear themselves out ten years sooner than 
would be necessary, were things done more upon 
system, and according to method and order. 

Mrs. Parkes, in her book on Domestic Duties, 
complains bitterly of the habit in housewives, of 
hurrying from one thing to another, and regards it 
as highly destructive not only to health of body, 
but to the power and disposition to improve the 
mind. " I recommend to you," she tells the young 
housewife, " to plan the whole (of your work) out 
every morning ; and, as far as you can command 
circumstances, to pursue your plan steadily. In 
what regards the business of your family, endeavor 
to arrange its performance as nearly at the same 
time of each day, as can conveniently be done." 
" This," she adds, " will prevent confusion or 
hurry." In another place she says — " Let every- 
thing be done in order and in the right season, and 
you will never be inclined to deny the truth that 
" there is a time for all things." 

Mrs. P. also complains of procrastination in 
young housewives ; and says it is a form of self- 
indulgence that entirely defeats its own intentions, 
by causing a load of business to be always hanging 
upon her shoulders. This habit is easily avoided 
by neglecting nothing which can be accomplished 
to-day, and by having, at every evening, a course 



68 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

marked out for each succeeding day. She even 
more than half encourages what some have called 
getting their work along one day beforehand, as in 
the following anecdote : 

" I have seen a striking proof of the advantages 
of a contrary spirit, (the contrary of procrastina- 
tion,) in Mrs. D.'s management, who has often 
been, laughingly, accused by her friends of per- 
forming to-day the duties of to-morrow, and anti- 
cipating all its wants. However this may be, her 
example is most worthy of imitation by all those 
who have large families ; for, in hers, neatness, 
order and comfort are evident characteristics ; and 
yet these are procured without any apparent effort 
or trouble ; and Mrs. D. herself, though she does 
not enter into general society, has always devoted 
much time to the instruction of her children." 

This leads us naturally to a very important part 
of the duty of all house-keepers, when there are 
children or young domestics ; and to see the neces- 
sity of a plan for their benefit. There is no instruc- 
tion that sinks deep like a mother's, whether that 
instruction is direct or indirect. I would have the 
young house-keeper form and pursue a meditated 
plan or system for her own comfort and health, 
but much more for the sake of her own peace, and 
comfort, and edification. I would have her do so 
for the comfort also of her husband and children, 






HAVING A PLAN. 69 

who are certainly, at all times, the more happy for 
it, in body and mind. But I would have her do 
so, above all, that she may find time not only to 
do her work slowly and instruct her daughters — 
yes, and her sons, too — in regard to the nature of 
her employments ; but to give them numerous 
lessons in philosophy, chemistry, natural history, 
physiology, health, &;c. Nor should I be satisfied 
till she had so simplified her business as to find 
time even for set lessons in her family, both in the 
forenoon and in the afternoon. The education — 
the right education — of a family of children, 
seems to me, I must say again, the more important 
part of the duty of a house-keeper, provided she 
is, at the same time, as I maintain she generally 
should be, the wife and the mother. But this 
subject of combining house-keeping with maternal 
instruction, cannot be pursued to its full extent 
in this volume. I will only repeat here a remark 
which can never be too often repeated, that this 
combination of elementary instruction with house- 
bold duties, is one of the best methods — perhaps 
the only successful method — which can ever be 
devised for rendering the family what it was obvi- 
ously intended by Divine Providence it should be, 
the most agreeable as well as most happy place in 
the world, for the young of both sexes. It is 
almost unnecessary to add, that should the time 



70 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

ever arrive, when the sons and daughters of our 
citizens come to prefer the kitchen, the parlor, the 
garden and the chamber, and the company and 
familiar conversation of the mother and of each 
other, to all the pleasures and enjoyments to be 
found abroad, half the temptation, and half the 
vice and crime in the world, will be prevented. 



CHAPTER IV. 



KEEPING ACCOUNTS. 

Every housewife should keep her own accounts. Deficiency 
in female instruction. Method of keeping an account. 
Advantages. 

It may excite a little surprise that I should 
insist on the necessity, in a young housewife, of 
keeping accounts. Her defective education, it will 
be said, unfits her for the task. This, however, is 
not strictly true. Every person who can read and 
write, can keep accounts. Not always in a way, 
perhaps, which would be perfectly intelligible to 
others, but in a way which would be intelligible to 
herself; and this is the main point to be secured.. 

But though we admit the ability of every person 
who can read and write, to keep his own accounts, 
it does not follow that the study of book-keeping 
is of no service. I deem it highly desirable, not 
to say indispensable, to every individual of both 
sexes. And herein is a sad deficiency in the usual 
course of female instruction. Young ladies are 
taught many things of comparatively little value, 



72 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

while this subject is usually neglected. But if 
mothers are to be our house-keepers, the general 
intention of Providence respecting females requires 
that they should be trained to everything which 
pertains to house-keeping. There would be far 
less of poverty, and bankruptcy, and crime among 
us, if all females were trained to the art of 
book-keeping, and if all wives kept their own 
accounts. 

Every article purchased by the house-keeper, 
let it be ever so small, should, every evening, be 
carefully and regularly entered. All the particulars 
should be mentioned, and all the circumstances 
preserved. This account should be occasionally 
reviewed, examined and adjusted. In this way, 
the house-keeper will not only be acquiring the 
habit of order, but will, at the same time, be study- 
ing frugality and economy. She will see how 
readily small sums swell into large accounts, and 
discover, from time to time, many items of expen- 
diture which might have been omitted, without in 
the least diminishing the happiness of any member 
of the family. 

Such a course will, in short, greatly assist her in 
comparing her expenses from time to time, with 
her or her husband's income ; so that the former 
may not be suffered to exceed or go beyond the 
latter. There is a sort of recklessness on this 



KEEPING ACCOUNTS. 73 

subject, apparent In our community, which it be- 
comes every rational, and above all every christian 
house-keeper to avoid. 

It is, moreover, a source of satisfaction as well as 
of pecuniary advantage to the husband, to find his 
wife carefully preserving a record of everything 
she expends. Not that he wishes, by any means, 
to act as a spy upon her proceedings. But as he 
keeps, or ought to keep a regular account himself, 
it is not only convenient but indispensable that her 
purchases should be entered somewhere ; and what 
better method can be devised than that she should 
keep a book of her own ? 

The principal objection to this duty of a house- 
wife is, that it consumes time. Without availing 
myself of what I deem a fundamental principle 
everywhere in life, that there is always time for 
everything which ought to be done, my reply 
would be, that on the principles involved in the 
present volume, every house-keeper will have so 
much of relief from the ordinary routine of domes- 
tic concerns, as will afford her ample leisure for 
keeping her accounts. Indeed I deem it useful for 
all men, women and youth, to keep a record of 
their expenses through life ; and I believe that if 
we have money to spend and time in which to 
expend it, we have also time enough to make a 
faithful and legible record of the expenditure. 



xll 



74 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPliR. 

This suggestion is not one of mere theory. I 
have known a few house-keepers who kept a 
memorandum of their expenses, in this way, simply 
for the purposes I have mentioned. I am not here 
speaking of the regular accounts kept with the 
baker, the milk-man, the wash-woman, &ic. ; but 
of an account kept by the housewife for her own 
and her husband's amusement and instruction, and 
ultimate profit. 



CHAPTER V. 



KEEPING A JOURNAL. 



General importance of keeping a journal. Qualifications. 
Method should be simple. Materials of the journal. A 
difficulty — how overcome. Reflections. 



This duty is not deemed peculiar to the house- 
keeper. Every individual in the world would 
derive benefit from preserving a daily record of 
events, with the reflections to which they give 
rise. Is it asked, what there is, in the monotony 
of the parlor and kitchen, worth recording in a 
journal ? 

I do not deny that the duties which pertain to 
house-keeping are somewhat monotonous ; but so 
are those which pertain to almost every other 
occupation or profession. Much of the monotony, 
however, is owing to a monotonous state of the 
mind. Few persons are as thoroughly imbued as 
they should be with the spirit of improvement. Too 
many look upon the stream of life, as it passes, to 
be still the same ; whereas it ought to be regarded 
as ever fresh, and new, and varying. 



76 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Let a house-keeper be but once thoroughly filled 
with the desire of improvement in her calling — 
let her carefully observe every process to which, 
in the discharge of her numerous duties, she is 
called — let her observe her failures in everything, 
no matter how small — and let her strive, from day 
to day, to do, in everything, what Paul the apostle 
requires, when he says, " do all to the glory of 
God," — let her possess this spirit, I say, and I 
have no doubt she will find materials enough for a 
journal. 

Her journal may be kept in the simplest manner. 
It is not necessary to observe any particular form. 
All that I would ask is neatness and sense. I 
would not make blots or write nonsense. I would 
recall once a day, or oftener if it were preferred, 
the events of the day — the failures and the suc- 
cesses in cookery and other duties ; the misgivings 
or painful reflections ; the bright and joyful thoughts 
that had been indulged ; the hopes entertained ; 
the new facts acquired ; the new principles estab- 
lished ; the names and character of persons who 
called ; and, in short, everything that it would be 
rational to recount to an intimate friend, as a hus- 
band or mother, in case an attempt were making 
to give to one of these relatives an account of the 
day, with its most minute details and trifling oc- 
currences. 



, 



KEEPING A JOURNAL. 77 

No house-keeper finds any sort of difficulty in 
relating the events of a day to an intimate friend. 
She will not fail to recount, with fluency, her 
errors, as well as her successes. Why then should 
it be more difficult to write them ? And yet we all 
know it is. The truth is, we forget that writing 
should be just like good and correct conversation ; 
and conversation should be like writing, only un- 
written; that, in short, we should have but one 
language for both. Let this difficulty be but ban- 
ished, and there is no person fit to be a house- 
keeper, who would not have abundant materials for 
a journal, nor any one who would not find herself 
greatly benefited by the record. 

You will ask me, perhaps, to give you an ex- 
ample of such a record. But this I deem it unne- 
cessary to do — unnecessary even for you. Time 
and experience will direct you properly. The 
great thing is to begin. If I can succeed in moving 
you to this, I shall have gained my point. I do 
not beheve there are many persons in the world, 
who have really become possessed of the true spirit 
of improvement, and who have adopted a plan in 
house-keeping which gives them time for the em- 
ployment, who, having once begun to keep a 
journal, and tasted its sweets, would not continue 
it. What if there was little to say at first ? It is 
something to say that. When the hour assigned 



78 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

for making the record came, you would not hesitate 
to tell a friend you had nothing to say in it. Then 
why not put it down with the pen ? You would 
not hesitate to say much more than this to a 
living friend. Then why not place that, too, in 
the journal ? This is nature's simple way. By 
and by you will not want for facts, observations and 
reflections. The journal itself — educating you — 
will seem to elicit them. 



CHAPTER VI. 



NATURE OF FOOD IN GENERAL. 

In what sense man is omnivorous. Man a free agent. Ani- 
mal food. Nutritious character of food. Table of nutri- 
tious suhstances. Second table, from the French. Infe- 
rences from these tables. Proofs of the inferior nutritive 
powers of lean meat. Three great divisions of aliments. 
The grand object pf all food. 

Man has the power of deriving nourishment 
from almost every substance, both of the animal 
and the vegetable kingdoms of nature. A good 
education and temperate habits, will enable him 
not merely to subsist, but to enjoy a measure of 
health, and attain a degree of longevity, in almost 
every clime, and in the use of almost every kind 
of food, drink, Stc. By this, however, is meant, 
that his stomach and digestive system are so " ac- 
commodating," that he can acquire the capacity of 
digesting, and to some extent, of assimilating — 
changing into blood, flesh, bones, &z;c. — ^not only 
flesh, fish, oil and blood, but almost all sorts of 
grain, seeds, nuts, roots, herbs, and even the bark 



80 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

of trees. In this sense, but It is in this sense 
alone, he may be justly said to be omnivorous. 

But because he can subsist on all things, does it 
therefore follow that he must eat all things ? In 
morals, character of some sort may indeed be 
formed under the worst examples and the worst 
influences ; and so in matters which pertain to 
intellectual improvement, the mind may be fed and 
indeed may grow, by reading books of the most 
inferior character ; but does it therefore follow that 
no choice is to be exercised ? Because we can 
eat all things — morally and mentally — must we 
therefore do it ? And so in physical matters, and 
especially in the matter of eating and drinking, 
because we can digest all things, must we there- 
fore eat all things ? For what purpose, then, is 
man a free agent ? Why has the Creator delegated 
to him the right of choice ? 

That man has the power of choice, is a posi- 
tion which will not probably be controverted. 
That the Creator had an object or end in view in 
giving him this right of choice, is at least equally 
true. But do we conform to his purposes — do we 
execute his will and accomplish his ends — when 
we refuse to exercise it in regard to the selection 
of our food ? Or are we to use our power of 
choice in regard to the company we keep and the 
books we read, and yet eat and drink at hap- 



NATURE or FOOD IN GENERAL. 81 

hazard, guided by no rules — except, perhaps, to 
eat and drink everything we can — and exercising 
not the right of selection ? 

With this view — and I believe it to be a fair 
one — how strange is the conclusion, that because 
man can eat animal food and derive nourishment 
and even enjoy a measure of health from it, there- 
fore he must use it! 

I know it is attempted to fortify this argument 
by talking about the necessity of eating flesh or 
fish in order to get azote into the system ; because 
we have four teeth in thirty-two which slightly 
resemble those of carnivorous animals ; and be- 
cause the structure of our intestines has been sup- 
posed to be midway between those of the animals 
that feed on flesh and those that feed on vegetable 
substances. But we forget that the ox and the 
horse, that eat no flesh, require azote as much as 
man. Now how are they to get it ? Must they 
eat meat ? As to the teeth, it is also well known 
that our teeth most resemble those of the ourang 
outang, who feeds on fruits and seeds. And as to 
the intestines, it is found out, of late, that the struc- 
ture of these, so far as we can argue anything from 
it, is in favor of vegetable eating, entirely. 

These old arguments are now generally given 
up. Lawrence, Cuvier and Lambe, in Europe, 
and a large number of the physicians of this coun- 



83 ' THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

try, do not hesitate to admit, that human heahh 
may be perfect, and hfe be sustained as long as it 
now is, in the exclusive use of good vegetable food, 
in almost every climate. We want no farther 
concessions. Admit but this ; let it be granted 
that the physical welfare of man will not suffer 
from the exclusive use of vegetable food, and we 
are satisfied— nay, driven — in view of its moral 
and intellectual benefits, to adopt it without delay. 
The moral and social advantages of living on fari- 
naceous vegetables and fruits, it is believed, have 
never been enough considered. 

It is not my intention, in this work and in this 
place, to go deeply into the argument in favor of 
a vegetable and fruit diet. The foregoing con- 
siderations, with the few that follow, are all that 
my present limits will admit. These being pre- 
mised, I shall take for granted the superiority of 
vegetable food, and proceed on that principle. 

It is almost constantly said and believed, that 
our stomachs require a greater quantity of vegeta- 
ble than of animal food, because the former is less 
nutritious ; whereas, it is the reverse. Rice, and 
nearly or quite every form of bread, peas, beans, 
and many more vegetable substances, are much 
more nutritious than beef steak or any kind of 
lean meat or fish with which I am at present ac- 
quainted. 



NATURE OF FOOD IN GENERAL. 



83' 



The following table, derived from chemical 
analysis, shows the relative proportion of nutritious 
matter in some of the more common substances 
used as human food : 



100 lbs 


Wheat 


contain 


85 lbs. nutritious mat 




Rice 




90 


« a 




Rye 




80 


ei ii 




Barley 




83 


tt <c 




Beans 




89 to 92 


« « 




Peas 




93 


« <c 




Lentils, 




94 


(( <c 




Meat, (average) 


35 


« « 




Potatoes 


« 


25 


a « 




Beets 


ct 


14 


<< (C 




Carrots 


a 


10 


(( « 




Cabbage 


ti 


7 


« (( 




Greens 


u 


6 


It u 




Turnips 


a 


4 


<l li 



Of course the proportion of nutritious suostance 
will vary somewhat according to the variety or 
species of the article, as well as the quahty of 
the soil ; but this is believed to be, in general, a 
fair estimate. The following recent estimate, de- 
rived from the Encyclopaedia Americana, accords 
very nearly with the preceding. It is the result 
of a series of experiments made by Messrs. Percy 
and Vauquelin — men of the highest learning and 
research — and communicated by them to the 
French minister of the interior : 



84 



THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 



100 lbs 


Bread contain 


80 lbs. nutrit. matter 




Meat, (average) 




35 






French beans 




92 






Broad beans 




89 






Peas 




93 






Lentils 




94 






Potatoes 




25 






Carrots 




14 






Greens and Turnips 


8 





Hence it follows, say Messrs. Percy and Vau- 
quelin. that one pound of good bread is equal, in 
point of real nutriment, to two and a half pounds 
of potatoes ; and seventy-five pounds of bread 
and forty of meat — one hundred and fifteen of 
both — are nearly equal to three hundred pounds of 
potatoes. Half a pound of bread and five ounces 
of meat are equal to three pounds of potatoes. 
One pound of potatoes is equal to four pounds 
of cabbage or three of turnips. And one pound 
of rice bread, they say, is equal to three pounds 
of potatoes. To which we may add, that it is obvi- 
ous from both tables, that all sorts of bread contain 
more than twice as much nutriment in the pound 
as butcher's meat ; and rice, peas and beans almost 
three times as much. 

But what then becomes of the old theory of 
physicians and others, that vegetables are less 
nutritious than meat ? I reply that I do not know. 
I will only say, here, that by vegetables they often 



NATURE OF FOOD IN GENERAL. 85 

meant green or crude vegetables, such as celery 
and other salads, cabbage, turnips, beets, aspara- 
gus, potatoes, and green fruits. Few persons, 
learned or unlearned, in conversation or in books, 
when they spoke of vegetable food, ever thought 
of bread or rice. Yet these it is, and the other 
farinacea, on which the vegetable eater principally 
depends. What have usually been meant by 
vegetables, are, perhaps, the potatoe and sweet 
apple not excepted, rather less nutritious — or at 
least not more so, the best of them — than meat ; 
nor would their exclusive use, unless it were the 
apple and the potatoe, be so well calculated to 
sustain the mind and body in the best state, as 
those which contain more nutriment, or even as 
lean meat. 

That fat meat contains more nutriment than 
almost anything else I am not disposed to deny ; 
but that the stomach can extract a large proportion 
of its nutriment, is more doubtful. My belief is, 
that where we are trained to the use of much fat, 
the stomach acquires the power of digesting a 
small portion of it — enough, at least, to sustain a 
measure of health and longevity ; but that it is a 
process so contrary to the best intentions of nature 
respecting us, that it is done at a very great — and 
in our climate unnecessary — expenditure of vital 
power. The poor Greenlanders and Esquimaux, 



86 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

though apparently driven to the necessity of sub- 
sisting chiefly on fat, maintain but a miserable 
existence on it ; nor is that existence very long. 
In our own more temperate climate, the system 
finds great difficulty in digesting oil, even where 
we have been early trained to it j and in tropical 
climates a greater difficulty still. 

I have spoken of fat and its intrinsic nutritive 
qualities ; but it is seldom that it is eaten in solid 
masses among us. And even when it is, it is but 
seldom digested. Of the pieces commonly pro- 
cured of butchers and in the market, the far greater 
part is principally lean, with only a little fat inter- 
mixed. 

Some of the abler French chemists have con- 
cluded, from experiment, that pure fat contains 
four times as much nutriment as the leanest portion 
of muscle, or what is commonly called lean meat. 
Now as the fat, if it were pure nutriment, could 
only contain a hundred per cent of nutritious mat- 
ter, it would seem to follow that the leanest meats 
contain but twenty-five per cent. 

The truth, as I suppose, is, that lean meats, as 
they commonly present themselves to us before 
they are cooked, mixed with more or less of fat, 
contain from twenty-five to fifty per cent of nutri- 
ment. But if we look at the tables, we find that 
even allowing the best beef steak to contain fifty 



NATURE OF FOOD IN GENERAL. 



87 



per cent of nutritious matter, rice would be nearly 
twice as high in the scale of nutriment; and 
wheat and corn would, in this respect, fall but a 
little behind rice. Peas and beans are also about 
twice as nutritious as the best of lean meats ; and 
even potatoes, if good, contain twenty-five per 
cent of nutriment. So that he who eats rice, 
bread, puddings, Stc, should eat less by weight 
than of animal food, instead of more. It does not 
alter this fact, that vegetable eaters often claim an 
indulgence on this ground, in regard to quantity ; 
it only shows their ignorance, or their slavery to 
their appetites. 

It is quite true that an unnecessary mass, even 
of pure nutriment, lying inactive in the stomach, 
would produce considerable disturbance in the 
animal economy. Still, it would not be so great 
as that which is produced by a smaller quantity 
of food which is much more stimulating in its ten- 
dency. 

We are so much accustomed to eating and 
drinking for the sake of the immediate stimulus 
and momentary strength we obtain by it, that we 
are apt to feel unsatisfied when we eat and drink 
that which does not produce these effects in a very 
sensible degree. Now flesh and fish, and high 
seasoned food, and fermented and alcoholic drinks, 
by the immediate effect they produce on the 



88 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

nerves of the stomach, and through them on the 
brain and nervous system generally, excite us 
much more than mild and bland substances ; and 
give us, for a short time, unless the quantity be 
excessive, much more mental and bodily strength 
and activity. But rice and bread, and other more 
nutritive though more simple substances, produce 
no such increase of heat and strength, and do not, 
therefore, so immediately satisfy us ; and as their 
presence, in too large a quantity in the stomach, 
does not immediately produce any remarkable or 
sensible disturbance, we eat on, looking in vain for 
the feelings we are accustomed to receive from food 
and drink which are more exciting. And thus it is, 
at least in part, that the notion has originated that 
these bland substances are not so nutritious as flesh 
and fish. The very fact which should prove their 
comparative excellence and adaptation to the hu- 
man stomach and the whole system, has thus been 
construed into a proof of their insufficient nutritive 
powers. 

There are three great divisions of human ali- 
ments. The first and most important — the primary 
division — is the farinaceous or mealy vegetables. 
These, whenever they can be obtained in a perfect 
state, are to the healthy who are trained to their 
use, best adapted to human wants and human 
sustenance, in every climate and under every pos- 



NATURE OF FOOD IN GENERAL. 89 

sible circumstance. I mean, that if we were to he 
confined to either of the three divisions I have 
named, this would be the best and safest. The 
second grand division is the fruits. These are 
principally designed for the hot or warm season. 
These two grand divisions — suitably combined — 
constitute the most appropriate food of man. They 
are his natural food, if he has any natural food 
at all. Animal food — the third grand division — 
is admissible in certain circumstances and con- 
ditions, national and individual ; national, as in 
the case of the Greenlanders or the Esquimaux, 
who cannot always get food which is better — indi- 
vidual, as in the young infant or in certain diseased 
states of body, as in diabetes, or perhaps a few 
cases of scrofula or dyspepsia. Even if there are 
a few among us who call themselves healthy, but 
who cannot or fancy they cannot, on account of 
long established habits, at once quit the use of ani- 
mal food, their condition is most properly regarded 
as a diseased condition. 

I have said little of drinks in this place, because 
in the first place, I hold there is but one proper 
drink in the world, viz., water ; and in the second 
place, because I shall speak on this subject, inci- 
dentally, in other chapters. 

There is one more thought which I wish to 
present to the reader before I pass to the con- 



90 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

sideration of particular kinds of food, and the 
methods of preparing them. As the object of all 
food is to nourish, and sustain, and render useful 
and happy the whole man — compounded as he is, 
of body, mind and heart — and not merely to give 
him pleasure in eating, or make him a better animal 
merely ; so this is the legitimate object, not only 
of each grand division of food, but of each par- 
ticular article. The grand question, in short, is, 
What are the kinds of food which are best for 
healthy persons — best for their whole being, here 
and hereafter ? We have no moral right to use 
anything short of the best, when we know what 
that best is, and can as well have it as that which 
is but second best. We have no more right in 
physical than in moral matters, to slumber on 
doubtful ground. We are to do good even by our 
eating and drinking ; and not merely to do good, 
but do the most good in our power. 



CHAPTER VII. 



FARINACEOUS FOOD. 

Primary aliments. Secondary aliments. Substitutes. The 
following part of the work a vocabulary. General plan 
Its contents. 

It has been already observed, that the farina 
ceous or mealy vegetables constitute the first ana 
best division of human aliments. They may be 
regarded as primary — and the fruits secondary 
Animal food, except to the infant or the savage, 
and in a few other cases and circumstances, is only 
a substitute for food which is better. The infant 
is trained to the farinacea, as soon as he can be ; 
and the savage adopts this class of aliments as soon ' 
as he becomes civilized. 

This primary class of aliments, in one way or 
another, forms— and indeed always has formed — 
the principal food of the majority of the human 
race. Rice, and pulse, and the various forms of 
grain — wheat, rye, barley, oats and Indian corn — 
are the means of forming, and, I repeat the idea, 
ever have been the means of forming the great 



92 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

mass of blood which has flowed in human veins, 
and from which has been formed the mass of the 
human solids and fluids, ever since time began. I 
know this is not the general belief; but it is not, 
therefore, the less true. The Japanese, by tens 
of millions, live chiefly on rice ; and so do the 
Chinese, and Hindoos, and Burmans, by their 
hundreds of millions. The tens of millions of 
middle Africa, and of southern and middle Europe, 
and even a part of the population of South 
America, live on rice, grain, roots and fruits. True, 
they are often compelled to do so, from stern 
necessity, or some other cause ; but this does not 
alter the facts. Meat is sometimes used, but it is 
often as a condiment, and only assumes the rank 
of a principal food, (with the exception, perhaps, 
of the United States and one or two more coun- 
tries of moderate population,) among the uncivilized 
or among the rich and luxurious ; and its conse- 
quences to these two classes of men are most 
obvious. If it enervates the individual but slowly, 
it does so, therefore, the more surely ; and what 
injures slowly the character of individuals, sinks 
rapidly the nation which is composed of those 
individuals. 

In treating of the farinacea, it has been my 
object to present just that kind of information 
which would be valuable to a house-keeper, from 



FARINACEOUS FOOD. 93 

day to day, as a vocabulary. In connection, there- 
fore, with almost every substantial article of food, 
as wheat, or rice, or potatoes, I have introduced 
more or less of dietetic principles and facts, to 
which I solicit particular attention. 1 believe that 
this method of instruction — this combination of the 
various topics connected with food — is the very 
best popular way of presenting the subject which 
can possibly be adopted. 

It was my original purpose to place the articles 
in the order of their value ; I mean in the order 
of their value in my own estimation. Thus I have 
placed wheat first, which I deemed the most valu- 
able article of human diet, corn next, rye next, 
and so on. I have not, however, in every instance, 
followed out my plan exactly ; but the deviations 
from it are neither very wide nor very^ important. 
I also intended, originally, to treat of each article at 
a length which was somewhat in proportion to its 
usefulness as a part of our diet ; but here my 
deviations have been much more frequent than in 
the former case. Again ; this first class of ali- 
ments is made to include some substances which 
cannot, in philosophical strictness of language, be 
called farinaceous ; but their number is not con- 
siderable. Lastly, I have not included in it 
every article, even of the class of farinacea, which 
has been used for food, but only some of the 



94 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

most important, and those with which I am ac- 
quainted. 

The substances considered in this primary class 
of ahments — the farinacea — are wheat, Indian 
corn, rye, rice, barley, oats, potatoes, beans, peas, 
buckwheat, millet, beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips, 
onions, radishes, squashes, pumpkins, gourds, cab- 
bages, lettuce, tomatoes, greens, celery, arrowroot, 
tapioca, salep and mushrooms. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



FOOD FROM WHEAT. 

Remarks on Wheat in general. Bread. Why wheat meal 
should not be bolted. Unfermented cakes. Loaf bread. 
Mixed bread. Crackers, biscuit, &c. Bread pudding. 
Boiled wheat. Toast, &c. Bread and milk. Bread and 
butter. Pastry. Gingerbread. Flour puddings. Bread 
and fruits. Potatoe bread. 



Among all civilized nations, and not a few 
savage ones, bread constitutes a staple article of 
food. When I say this, however, I must do it 
with many limitations and some qualifications. 
Bread is a staple article of diet in theory, rather 
than in practice. There are few who are truly 
fond of bread in its simplest, most pure, and most 
healthful state. The concession that it is the 
" staiF of life," is indeed generally made ; hut the 
belief is but " skin deep." People generally keep 
it about them as they do truth, and pretend to 
regard it as a staple ; and many, doubtless, never 
dream that the fact is otherwise ; but, as with 
truth so with bread, notwithstanding our conces- 
sions, direct and indirect, in its favor, many seem 



96 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

to avoid it as much as conveniently they can. Is 
there one person in a thousand who would truly 
enjoy a meal of simple bread of two days old ? 

Bread, however, should be a staple in practice 
as well as in theory. As the class of farinaceous 
vegetables and the fruits are the best articles of 
human diet, so of the various kinds of the farinacea, 
though all of them are excellent, I regard wheat 
as, on the whole, far superior to every other. By 
this I mean, that if mankind were to be confined 
for a term of years, or for life, to any one article, 
health would be best promoted, and the greatest 
degree of longevity attained, by the use of wheat. 

The great change which is produced during the 
application of heat to the paste or dough, formed 
from farinaceous substances, in my view, some- 
what improves its quahties. This change consists, 
in part, in transforming a portion of the farina or 
farinaceous matter into saccharine matter or sugar ; 
though in some respects the nature of the change 
is not so well understood as its effects. 

The following points I regard as settled — 1. That 
bread, whether from wheat or any other grain, is 
not only more favorable to mastication, and thus 
more healthy, but also more favorable to health 
independent of mastication, than the simple grain 
uncooked. 2. That all grain should be raised on 
a good and proper soil, and without too much arti- 



FOOD FROM WHEAT. 97 

ficial heat or prompting, by manures or otherwise. 
3. That it should be properly cleaned, both by 
winnowing and washing. 4. That it should be 
ground properly. 

The proper modes of cultivating grain cannot 
be discussed here. Of the method of cleaning it, 
I need only say, that it should always be washed, 
as a last process ; and afterwards dried as well as 
possible, in the open air or sunshine. 

Of grinding wheat, more needs to be said, 
because on this subject there is a great deal of 
error abroad. There has long been a very exten- 
sive belief in the community, that the finer it is 
ground, and the more nicely the bran is separated 
from the flour and rejected, the better. I object 
to grinding wheat or any other grain in the fashion- 
able manner, for the following reasons : 

1. The sweetness of the wheat is in part de- 
stroyed by it. Every unprejudiced individual, let 
him complain ever so much of its scratching his 
throat, will tell us that bread made of the unbolted 
meal is sweeter than fine flour bread. But whence 
is it so ? I believe that the friction and heat pro- 
duced by the grinding process is injurious. Richer- 
and, in his Physiology, assures us that loaf sugar, 
in being brought to a very fine powder by means 
of a file or rasp, is reduced, in some measure, to 
the state of starch ; that is, loses a part of its 
7 



98 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

sweetness. I have also tested the truth of this 
statement by experiment. Now the heat and 
friction of the mill-stones, laid close together as 
they are in grinding fine flour, appear to me to 
reduce the flour to a state in which it is more 
insipid and lifeless than it would be in other cir- 
cumstances, and thus to render it not only less 
palatable, but less wholesome. Indeed, that which 
is less palatable, other things being equal, is always 
less wholesome, even if there were nothing else 
about it to render it objectionable. 

2. Wheat ground very finely has a less favor- 
able action on the intestines than that which is 
coarser. The retention of every part of the sub- 
Stance of the wheat is also believed to be favor- 
able. Divine Providence seems to have ordained 
that the skin of the smaller grains, properly broken, 
should be taken with the rest, to facilitate intestinal 
action. Not that fine flour promotes costiveness, 
exactly ; but only that it does not act on the lining 
membrane of the intestines with sufficient energy. 

3. Fine flour is too nutritious. If there be a 
fact in dietetics which is established beyond the 
possibility of a reasonable doubt, it is that health 
and longevity are best promoted by the combina- 
tion, in our diet, of a portion of innutritious matter 
with that which is purely nutrient. Even Sir Gilbert 
Blane, who on a point like this will be among the 



POOD FROM WHEAT. 99 

last to be suspected of heresy, says — >" Plain solid 
food, combined with a certain proportion of unas- 
similable matter, is infinitely more efficient for the 
purposes of health and strength, than that which 
consists of pure elementary matter." 

These three reasons — to say nothing of any 
othere — are amply sufficient, in my own view, to 
establish the principle that grain should be ground 
coarsely. How coarsely, has not, that I know, 
been determined. Perhaps that which is commonly 
sold in the market under the name of dyspepsia 
flour, is, rather too fine. I think that if it were 
somewhat coarser it would be better relished and 
preferred, just as the coarsest ground corn is ; and I 
also believe it would be rather more wholesome. It 
is true, that the finer it is ground the lighter loaves 
it makes ; but they are not, therefore, the sweeter. 
If every family ground it for themselves, in hand-^ 
mills of a proper construction, they might grind 
it more or less coarsely, as suited their own tastes, 
or their own notions of health or fitness. 

But suppose we have the meal duly ground. 
How shall it be preserved ? This is an important 
point, though it is generally overlooked. Few 
persons seem to consider that all meal or flour can 
be injured by standing where it is exposed to damp 
or unwholesome air, or an atmosphere filled with 
noisome exhalations. Whereas, it ought always to 



100 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

be kept in a dry, cool, sweet place, in a perfectly 
dry and clean vessel, and covered. 

Meal is sometimes kept in almost any other 
condition than in such a state as I have recom- 
mended, as many a house-keeper — and not a 
few rats and mice, had they vocal organs — could 
abundantly testify. If every family would grind 
their own meal, as suggested in the last paragraph, 
they would not only have sweeter and richer bread, 
but would be less troubled about preserving it ; as 
only a small quantity would probably be ground at 
a time, and it would soon be consumed. 

We come now to the consideration of particu- 
lar kinds of wheat bread. 

Unfermented Cakes. — My opinion is, that the 
best bread in the world is that which is made of 
recently and coarsely ground wheat meal, mixed 
with water, and baked in thin cakes, not unlike 
the unfermented cakes so common in many parts of 
the east, and so much used by the ancient Israel- 
ites. My preference for unleavened bread arises, in 
part, from the consideration that leaven is a foreign 
and partially decayed substance, which it were 
better to avoid unless some essential point is to be 
gained by its use. I know, indeed, that as used in 
many families, it is comparatively cleanly ; but it is 
not always so, even there; and in cities, and in 



FOOD FROM WHEAT. 101 

the neighborhood of breweries and distilleries, a 
kind of yeast is often used to which most persons 
would object if they were better acquainted with 
facts. It cannot be said of such yeast, as is 
usually said of filthy cider, that the dirt " works 
out," (though even the latter is not true,) for it is 
incorporated with the bread, and eaten with it. 

But the strongest objection to fermentation is, 
that it is one step in the progress of decay. Vege- 
table substances, it is well known, in their progress 
to entire putrefaction, usually pass through several 
stages or fermentations ; the first of which is the 
saccharine, or that in which sugar is evolved ; the 
second, the vinous, or that which produces alco- 
hol ; and the third, the acetous. Or if the sac- 
charine or sugary change- should not be regarded 
as a fermentation, and if the first fermentation, in the 
case of bread, were regarded as the vinous, still this 
is a fermentation, and is one step towards decay. 
Now can those substances be as wholesome, which 
have gone part of the way from a pure and perfect 
state to putrefaction, as those which remain in the 
highest state of perfection ? 

It is on this ground, chiefly, that I maintain the 
importance of using unfermented bread. It is 
true, as Mr. Graham says, in his " Treatise on 
Bread," that " there are many other considerations 
why unleavened bread of a proper quality and 



102 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

age, is better adapted to sustain the alimentary 
organs and general constitution of man, in their 
highest and best condition," besides the considera- 
tion of the changes induced by fermentation ; but 
then I conceive, as probably he does, that the 
latter is the more prominent.^ Some might urge 
the economy of unferraented bread, as it is well 
known that most persons eat one quarter, or at 
least one fifth more of fermented than of unfer- 
mented bread, provided both are a day or two old, 
as they ought to be ; but to this it may be replied, 
that the saving in this way is nearly counterbal- 
anced by the increased expenditure of time and 
fuel in cooking unfermented cakes. 

Loaf Bread. — When to the last circumstance 
is added the consideration, that " loaf or raised 
bread can be made so nearly in accordance with 
the vital laws and interests of our bodies, as 
scarcely to militate against them in any apprecia- 
ble degree," it may be questioned whether, on the 
whole, loaf bread ought not to be considered as 
the most proper bread for the mass of mankind. I 
believe, indeed, that there should be, and in the 

• Even Dr. Dunglison expressly says — " Bread prepared 
without leaven agrees better vsrith the stomach than the fer- 
mented." Dr. Paris's opinion, to the same effect, is given 
in another place. 



FOOD FROM WHEAT. 103 

nature of things, is, time enough for doing every- 
thing, by human beings, which ought to be done ; 
but then, such is the present distorted state of 
society, that it would be quite a tax upon the 
poorer class to be compelled to bake all their bread 
in thin cakes, especially where they use fireplaces. 
With cooking stoves it is often much more con- 
venient ; and if it requires more time and attention 
than baking in an oven, it also requires less fuel, 
since the cakes may be baked when the space in 
the stove would be wanted for nothing else, and 
with about the same quantity of fuel as would be 
required were no cooking going on. ' 

In order, however, to have perfect loaf bread, 
the material must be perfect, the dough must be in 
a proper condition, the loaves must be set in the 
oven at precisely the right moment, and must be 
properly and thoroughly baked ; and when per- 
fectly baked, must be kept in the right place. On 
all these points the author of the Treatise on 
Bread already alluded to, has spoken so well and 
at such length, that I hardly need to say any- 
thing except for the benefit of such as have not 
seen that work. And even to the last class it is 
not necessary to say much. 

The kneading should be so perfect that every 
particle of the mass should come in contact with 
more or less of the particles of the yeast, as well 



104 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

as of the water or milk used. It is customary, 
with many housewives, to mix the yeast and water 
with the dough, principally by stirring it ; and to 
omit almost entirely the kneading. But this is 
wrong. No process has, as yet, been invented 
which can be substituted for the kneading process, 
without rendering the bread less perfect. The 
mass will be uneven ; in some places it will be 
extremely light and porous, in others there will be 
hard or glutinous portions ; and the whole will 
sooner become sour. The more thoroughly and 
perfectly bread is kneaded, the more equal will be 
its appearance throughout, and the easier will it be 
to preserve it from acidity. 

One word in regard to the proper time for 
placing bread in the oven. This is to be done 
when it is raised or swelled to what appears to be 
about the extent to which this swelling will go ; 
but if it stand too long, we lose much of the sac- 
charine substance. The grand point is — I repeat 
it — to place it in the oven at the precise moment 
when it is at the height of the vinous fermentation. 
If delayed till the acetous fermentation begins — of 
which there is always great danger — it will not 
only be less pleasant to the taste, but less rich and 
nutritive ; and though a little saleratus or carbonate 
of soda may restore its lightness, it cannot restore 
the saccharine matter which has unnecessarily 



FOOD FROM WHEAT. 105 

been- changed into alcohol and carbonic acid, and 
has escaped, nor wholly remove the ill effects of the 
acetic acid. Better by far that the loaves should be 
set in the oven a little too early than too late. The 
latter is the condition of most of our bakers' bread. 
In order to have it spongy and porous, they suffer 
it to rise much ; and in order to correct the begin- 
nings of acidity, as well as make it rise still more 
than it naturally would, they add substances which, 
if they are not actually poisonous, are at least 
injurious to the tone of the stomach. 

Most house-keepers who have been unaccus- 
tomed to making bread of wheat meal, are not apt 
to have their ovens hot enough at first. Bread of 
this kind appears to require a hotter oven than 
bread made of fine flour. But a little observation 
and a few trials are all that are necessary to suc- 
cess, if the house-keeper have common sense, and 
if she have one more qualification, without which all 
else is comparatively of little avail — I mean, a love 
for the employment, and a love for her husband 
and family. No person who is a mother, who has 
a strong desire to promote her own personal im- 
provement, and the improvement and happiness 
of her husband and family, and who has but a faint 
conception of the importance, in this view, of hav- 
ing good bread, can fail of becoming, in a reasona- 
ble time, mistress of this first and most important 



106 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

branch of housewifery. All other persons — ba- 
kers by profession, hireUngs and domestics — may 
fail of success ; and so may some who bear the 
name of mothers, sisters or daughters. But no 
true mother, daughter or sister, who is at the same 
time correctly informed in regard to the influence 
of this article of food on human health and happi- 
ness, and on whom devolves the responsibility, can 
long remain ignorant of bread-makino-. 

It is rather more difficult to make loaf bread, at 
least of the coarse or unbolted meal, than to make 
the unleavened cakes which I have described 
above. There are, however, several ways of 
making the latter. The most common way has 
been to bake them in thin wafers ; and it is when 
they are ba^ced in this way that they cost so much 
labor. By means of a stove, unleavened cakes 
may be made very thick, with almost as little care 
and labor, all things considered, as the common 
loaf bread. 

Loaf bread, properly made, and duly preserved, 
will be nearly as good at the end of eight or ten 
days, as on the second day. I have even seen it 
in tolerable perfection on the twelfth or fourteenth 
day. It is best, however, from the second to the 
eighth. To have it sweet and delicious a fortnight, 
it must not be kept in a closet or pantry, " where 
you set away dishes of cold meat, cold potatoes 



FOOD FROM WHEAT. 107 

and other vegetables," and butter, cheese, &;c. ; 
nor in a damp filthy cellar, in the neighbor- 
hood of half putrid cabbage leaves, potatoes, 
apples, &£c. I have seen bread kept, for many a 
day, in a damp, dirty cellar, on shelves thick cov- 
ered with grease and dirt, to which neither soap 
nor water — no, nor even pure air nor the light of 
day — had been applied in a whole year. This 
will never do, for those who mean to consult 
health, or — I had almost said — decency. A neat, 
clean, airy, light room, is as indispensable for 
bread, as for company, clothes or bedding. I have 
known loaves of bread to imbibe the foul gases 
of the filthy places where they were kept, till the 
unimpaired sense of smell could detect their pres- 
ence after the bread had been removed to the 
breakfast table. 

Household Bread. — Next to unleavened cakes 
and loaf bread made of unbolted meal, I an^ 
inclined to place that form of wheaten bread which 
is prepared from the same meal, with the coarser 
parts separated by means of a sieve. The prepar- 
ation of this form of bread requires an attention to 
the same rules which I have laid down in the 
preceding paragraphs. It is, I confess, inferior to 
the former j but is much used in England. 



108 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Mixed Bread. — Many forms of excellent bread 
may be made by mixing unbolted wheat meal 
with rye meal, Indian meal, barley flour, rice flour, 
pea meal, potatoes, &c. The best of all these 
forms appears to me to be an admixture of wheat 
and Indian, in the proportion of two thirds wheat 
and one third Indian. Whether in the form of 
loaves or unleavened cakes, wafers or biscuits, this 
mixture forms one of the most palatable, and next 
to those I have mentioned above, one of the most 
wholesome kinds of bread in the world. A much 
smaller proportion of wheat with more Indian meal 
will, however, make most excellent bread ; and so 
will wheat meal and rye meal, wheat meal and 
barley, Stc, mixed in many and various propor- 
tions. 

Crackers, Biscuit, Sic. — There are various 
forms of crackers and biscuits found in our bakers' 
shops, now-a-days, prepared from unbolted wheat 
meal ; most of which, though inferior to bread, are 
nevertheless comparatively wholesome. Ship or 
pilot bread, made of fine flour, is on the whole a 
tolerable sort of bread ; nor have I as strong a 
dislike to bread made of fine wheat flour, when of 
suitable age, as many appear to have. It is much 
worse eaten hot or with butter than coarse bread ; 



FOOD FROM WHEAT. 109' 

nor is it as good when cold ; but whenever a 
person is in the exclusive use of coarse bread and 
fruit, to an extent that prevents any tendency to 
costiveness, the occasional use of flour bread will 
be very far from producing any positive injury. It 
is not because it is bad, that I object to it, but 
because it is not so useful as that which is better ; 
though for my own part I seldom, if ever, use it, 
unless I am from home, where that which is better 
cannot be obtained. " Rolls," as they are called, 
though worse hot than cold, are by no means 
among the most wholesome preparations, even of 
fine flour. 

Wheat flour ground finely as it formerly was, 
and as it is even now, for the most part, enters 
into a very great variety of compound articles of 
food. I have before me an English work, on 
Vegetable Cookery, containing more than three 
hundred and eighty recipes for preparing dishes 
into which wheat flour enters, as a more or less 
important part. I shall not attempt to describe, 
either in this place or elsewhere, one in twenty 
of these preparations. Most of them are unfit for 
the human stomach ; and of those which are toler- 
able, most of them are unnecessary. 

Of the various forms of wheat biscuit, those are 
best into which enter the fewest concentrated sub- 
stances — as eggs, butter, lard, cream, sugar, mo- 



lid THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

lasses, &;c. The preparations of biscuit and cake, 
into which eggs alone are suffered to enter, are 
almost innumerable. But I shall say more on this 
subject in a future chapter. 

Bread Pudding. — Several of the puddings 
made of bread, wheat meal, &,c., form very tolera- 
ble dishes. Among these the best with which I 
am acquainted, is a pudding made of stale bread. 
The reader will find the best account of this form 
of pudding in the chapter of recipes. There 
are, however, many ways of preparing it. One 
popular method is, to soften the bread by soaking 
it in milk till it becomes a soft mass, and then 
boiling it in a bag, like a pudding made of flour or 
dough. Such puddings as those to which I now 
refer, need no additions of sugar, sauce, butter, 
milk or gravy. They are sweet enough to the 
pure or perfect appetite without them. 

Boiled Wheat. — I think that good, clean 
wheat, simply boiled, and without any additions or 
condiments, would make a wholesome dish, if 
pains were taken to overcome the difficulties of 
masticating such small kernels. Buchan, in bis 
" Domestic Medicine," says expressly, that boiled 
grain is the most wholesome. Simple boiling, more» 
over, precludes all adulteration. 



FOOD FBOM WHEAT. Ill 

Crusts. — The crusts of bread are the richest as 
well as the sweetest part of the loaf; and this is one 
evidence of the greater excellence of the cracker or 
wafer, which is, as it were, all crust. And even 
those who are aged or infantile and toothless, can 
eat crusts by soaking them in various ways. I 
have lived in a family where nearly every member, 
old and young, avoided the crusts of the bread ; 
and in these circumstances I have rejoiced to make 
many a simple meal of nothing but these fragments, 
somewhat stale, soaked in water. . 

Toast, he. — To those individuals whose taste 
is not wholly simplified — rather I should say, re- 
stored to its primitive state — there are several other 
methods of preparing these substances, which are 
comparatively excellent. One is by drying them 
quite hard, pounding them in a mortar, and then 
soaking them in milk. Another is by toasting them, 
then pouring on a sufficient quantity of hot water, 
and then-, after beating them soft, adding a little 
milk, or butter and salt. To the simple and healthy 
palate, they would need neither butter nor milk ; 
or if either, nothing but a little of the latter. This 
last preparation it is which is called hrewis ; and 
notwithstanding the unpopularity of the crusts be- 
fore they are soaked and toasted, it is even with 
many fashionable families quite a favorite. Indeed 



112 THK YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

it is worthy of remark, that the crusts of bread 
seem to gather richness at every step of the process 
I have described. 

Bkead and Milk. — Bread and milk is an im- 
portant and favorite dish in almost every country 
where milk can be obtained. Although I regard 
solid food as generally preferable for healthy adults, 
and think it better, as a general rule, that bread, 
when eaten, should be eaten alone, and a full 
meal made of it, yet of all the liquid forms of food 
used by man, milk is the best ; and of compound 
dishes, bread and milk is one of the best. It is 
good, with the bread broken into the milk : but it 
is better if the bread be eaten by itself, and the 
milk drank slowly at intervals between the mouth- 
fuls — because we thus secure the benefits of a more 
perfect mastication and insalivation. Stale wheat 
flour bread is universally esteemed as an admirable 
accompaniment of milk ; but that form of bread 
which is best alone, is also best with milk or any 
other substance. Besides, the compound of flour 
bread and milk is seldom sufficiently active for the 
intestines ; and does not always prevent a degree 
of cost! ven ess. Boiled milk and bread, in various 
forms, or milk porridge, is also a favorite with many 
families ; and if coarse bread is used, it will hardly 
produce much costiveness. 






FOOD FROM WHEAT. 113 

Bread and Butter. — Bread and butter — if the 
butter be fresh and spread thin — is another of the 
less hurtful compounds ; but, like many other things 
I have mentioned, is not so good as bread alone. 
Many persons are fond of all sorts of bread, and 
of unbolted wheat meal bread among the rest, 
when toasted ; but the latter is not improved by 
toasting. Milk poured upon slices of toasted bread 
is a favorite dish with many ; but I must still say 
that the bread is best alone. Or if not alone, it is 
better to pour the milk upon slices of it not toasted. 
There is, however, one state in which bread can 
be somewhat improved by toasting slowly, or rather 
by drying ; and that is, when it is either too new 
or too moist. 

Pastry. — The various forms of cake and pastry 
in common use, whose basis is fine w-heat flour, are 
generally objectionable. It is scarcely necessary 
to name them ; their names would not be worth 
the space they would occupy. Among the least 
objectionable — though some of even these are bad 
enough — are, loaf cake, pound cake, gingerbread, 
rusks, pancakes, dough nuts, ginger nuts, tea cakes, 
and seed cakes. 

Fine flour crackers, retaining, as they often do, 
like fashionable hot rolls, the smell of firkin butter 
not so sweet as it ought to be, cannot be com- 
8 



114 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

mended ; nor are they very much to be desired by 
the healthy stomach, even in their best estate. 
Soda crackers, retaining as they do but little of the 
alkali, and shortened with nothing but milk, are 
much better. 

Gingerbread. — ^There is a kind of cake which, 
though without a particle of ginger, is yet allowed 
to retain the shape of that ancient preparation, and 
is not highly objectionable. It is, in fact, nothing 
in the world but the unleavened bread which I 
have so highly commended in the beginning of this 
article, with a little molasses added to it, and baked 
rather more slightly than other plain unleavened 
cakes. — ^X- 

Flour Pudding. — Of boiled wheat flour pud- 
dings — sometimes called minute puddings — I can- 
not say one favorable word ; nor of flour dumplings, 
whether in the form of dumplings proper, or enter- 
ing as a sort of crust or dumpHng into pot pies, 
&;c. Nor do I like what is called wheat mush, or 
puddings made of coarse or cracked wheat, unless 
eaten when cold. In this state wheat mush forms 
a very good article indeed. But all such soft 
doughy or slippery masses, eaten hot, are but little 
better than so many devices to cheat the teeth and 
saUvary glands ; and have no recommendation 



FOOD FROM WHEAT. 115 

which entitles them to take the place, at our tables, 
of articles which are equally nutritious, and more 
wholesome, as well as more palatable. 

Bread and Fruit. — My views of the propriety 
or utility of uniting bread and fruits at the same 
meal, will be gathered from other parts of the work. 
Happy is he who prefers them separately. But I 
cannot say that he who commits no worse dietetic 
errors than those of conjoining apples and other 
fruits, either raw or baked, with most of the various 
dishes prepared from wheat which I have here 
spoken of and commended, is very culpable. 

PoTATOE Bread. — ^Bolted flour has been, with 
us, commonly used for potatoe bread, or occasion- 
ally rye flour. I know of no reason why the un- 
bolted wheat meal should not be as much better, 
for this purpose, than any other, as it is in the for- 
mation of common bread. Of the preparation of 
potatoe bread, I shall treat elsewhere. 

Poisonous Bread. — I must not omit to mention, 
that there is always danger from the use of bread 
which is mouldy. At Hammersmith, in England, 
about the year 1830, the wife of one of the parish 
officers purchased one morning a loaf of bread, 
of which she ate a slice at breakfast. Her son, 



116 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

twenty years of age, ate two slices of the same 
bread toasted. Almost immediately after the meal, 
both became unwell, and diarrhoea, vomiting, and 
tenderness of the abdomen came on, and it was 
several hours before these symptoms abated. The 
loaf was of a yellowish color ; and though baked 
that morning, and heated for the usual length of 
time, it was sprinkled over with small vegetations, 
the greater part of which were black, a few green, 
and several yellow. It was soft, wet, inelastic, and 
so tough that it could be drawn into strings. Its 
taste was unpleasant, and its smell acrid. A piece 
of it being given to a cat and a dog, they were 
poisoned in the same manner with the man and 
woman. There was no doubt of the presence of 
poison, but the question arose whether it was the 
mould which produced the mischief, or the bread 
on which it grew. A considerable quantity of the 
mould — say four or five grains — was accordingly 
collected, and eaten by a young man aged about 
twenty-two, without the slightest injury, while an- 
other individual, who ate a small piece of the bread 
from which the mould had been taken, had colic 
and diarrhoea. This, and similar experiments, estab- 
lished the fact, that mouldy bread may, at least 
occasionally, prove poisonous. 



CHAPTER IX. 



INDIAN CORN, AND ITS COMPOUNDS. 

Qualities of Indian corn. Its excellence as food. Hulled 
corn. Boiled corn. Hommony. Indian cakes — eaten cool. 
Warm cakes. Parched corn. Boiled pudding. Brown 
bread. Baked pudding. Hasty pudding. Loaf bread. 
Dumplings. Meat bread. Gruel. Green corn. Polenta. 

t 
Indian corn is one of the most wholesome arti- 
cles for human sustenance, in the known world ; 
and it may justly be doubted whether the exclusive 
use of any other article, except wheat, would be 
so well adapted to develope our whole nature — 
physical and moral — as this substance. It forms 
a large proportion of the food of many individuals, 
and even of some whole tribes of men ; and there 
is nothing against the belief, that if used in a 
proper manner, it would impart full vigor of body 
and mind, and an unusual degree of health and 
longevity. 

I have recently received a letter from a respect- 
able traveller in Europe, which contains the fol- 
lowing statements, concerning the use of this article . 



118 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

in the valley of the Tesin or Tessin, in the north 
of Italy : 

" In this valley (the Tessin) a considerable 
quantity of Indian corn is raised, as we saw when 
we passed through it. It is said that some of the 
laboring classes live mostly on bread made from 
this corn. They live long and are seldom troubled 
with disease ; and labor, with them, is mere play. 

" The person who related this to me, said that 
he saw a company of these people last year, at 
work on a new road, in the canton of Neufchatel, 
(in Switzerland.) They ate nothing but this 
bread, and that, too, in small quantity. They 
were always cheerful and lively, and seemed like 
children at play ; while some of their fellow la- 
borers — Bernese and others — who ate more and 
different kinds of food, were not so cheerful ; and 
labor seemed to be a task to them." 

But we need not go to Italy or Switzerland to 
test the virtues of Indian corn. The Mexican 
Indians, as well as many other tribes of native 
Americans, together with many of the whites in 
some parts of America, feed largely on this article, 
with the happiest results. Perhaps it is not too 
much to say, that were mere gustatory pleasure 
concerned, there is no single article in the whole 
range of human diet which, through a long course 
of years, would procure to us so much enjoyment 



INDIAN CORN. 119 

as the various preparations of Indian corn — so rich, 
uncloying and delicious is it at all times, in all 
seasons, and in all climates. 

Hulled Corn. — Corn is probably best adapted 
to the wants of the human system when boiled 
whole. The only difficulty in this mode of pre- 
paration, is with the cuticle or hull that covers the 
kernel, and the part from which, in germination, 
the chit is produced. These are not so easily dis- 
engaged as could be desired. Lye has commonly 
been used to separate them ; but there are objec- 
tions to its use. It is true, that subsequent boiling 
will remove the taste as well as the poisonous 
properties of the lye in part, but never entirely. 
Besides, too much boiling wastes, in some slight 
degree, the nutriment. 

If corn is soaked or macerated in simple water 
of the temperature of about 100° of F., for ten 
or twelve hours, and afterwards boiled a reasonable 
time, the hulls will be so far disengaged, that they 
may be easily separated on the plate, and with 
as much expedition as is consistent with healthful 
mastication or safe deglutition. If, however, any 
person wishes to eat more rapidly, and to save 
time at the expense of health and life, he can 
add a bag of ashes to the corn at the first boiling, 
which will disengage the hulls more eflectually. 



120 THE YOUNG HOUSJE-KEEPER. 

It is true, I have known the whole mass swal- 
lowed without any attempt to separate the cuticle, 
and without any apparent evil effects. Not, how- 
ever, without great pains to masticate it perfectly 
and swallow it very slowly. 

HoMMONY. — The slightest departure from the 
most perfect state of this article, would seem to be, 
to use it simply cracked or in the form of what is 
sometimes called hommony, or samp. Here, how- 
ever, great pains is required, and much washing, 
if we mean to separate the cuticle. This form 
of food may be preserved after it is cooked, a long 
time. In cool weather, I have found it in the 
utmost perfection eight days after it was boiled. 

I have said that this preparation would seem to 
be the slightest departure, &:c., but in reality it is 
not so. The mastication and insalivation of hom- 
mony is less perfect than that of Indian bread, 
when cold. 

There is a method of preparing from the corn 
of the southern United States — which, as my 
readers may know, is hghter and whiter than ours — 
a kind of hommony which is essentially the same 
as our hulled corn, only it more readily becomes 
soft by boiling. It is exceedingly coarse, being 
scarcely if at all broken, and yet the hulls and 
chits appear to be removed as effectually as if an 



INDIAN CORN. 121 

alkali had been applied to it. (See the chapter 
of recipes.) Whether the process which is applied 
to southern com, for the purpose, would be equally 
applicable to our own, I am unable to say. 

Indian Cakes. — This valuable article of human 
sustenance, known by the various names of "johnny 
cake," " hoe cake," fee, is prepared differently by 
different persons ; but in almost every way with 
which I am acquainted, it forms — to those who are 
trained to it — a very palatable, and if eaten at a 
proper temperature, an exceedingly rich and whole- 
some food. 

The best way of preparation is probably the 
following : — The meal ground not too finely, should 
be wet with pure, cold water, (though some use 
boiling water,) and made into very thin cakes, 
which should be slowly baked till they become 
somewhat firm. These should be eaten without 
the addition of cream, butter, molasses, or any 
other condiment, and of the temperature of the 
surrounding atmosphere. Made in the common 
way, however, that is, of the ordinary thickness, 
and not baked very hard, and eaten with the usual 
additions, they cannot be said to be unwholesome, 
absolutely so ; but only inferior to those which are 
made still more in accordance with the human 
constitution. 



122 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

No food which is prepared from Indian corn 
ought ever to be used hot. Corn has long been 
considered as too stimulating for the common food 
of most of our domestic animals ; and it is quite 
as stimulating as the human animal can bear with 
safety. Its stimulating tendency, however, is 
greatly increased by heat, which, for this reason, 
if no other, should be avoided. 

But there are other reasons. We do not masti- 
cate it properly, if used while hot. We also eat too 
much of it. Its richness and sweetness are so 
remarkable, that with a pure and perfect appetite 
most people who use it are in perpetual danger 
of over-eating, when it is even used cold ; and if 
eaten hot or very warm, the danger is very greatly 
mcreased. 

But I repeat it, Indian cakes, if eaten quite 
cool, and not until many hours after they are 
baked, require more mastication and insalivation 
than any other form of the article except that I 
have named first — the hulled corn ; and next to 
that are, therefore, recommended. So slight, more- 
over, is the departure from nature, that for variety's 
sake, I would use the two alternately. 

It is impossible for me ever to forget the repug- 
nance I felt in early life, when compelled, for the 
fii'st time, to make a dinner of Indian cakes, not hot. 
I say compelled, not physically, but socially. 



INDIAN CORN. 123 

I. was at the time a district school teacher, and 
was accustomed to board in the famihes of my 
employers. Some of these families were exceed- 
ingly poor, others were in more comfortable cir- 
cumstances. It was in a part of New England 
where johnny cake, eaten either hot or cold, was 
considered quite a vulgar article of diet, more fit 
for swine than men ; though some would eat it, if 
they could get it, at least occasionally, at the risk 
of their reputation. I was one of the latter class. 
Eaten hot, and especially with butter, I thought it 
a most delicious substance — the public opinion to 
the contrary notwithstanding. 

It was customary when the families lived remote 
from the school-house, to carry with us our dinner. 
Mine, I was permitted to carry by itself, if I chose ; 
but to show myself a true republican and to please 
the pupils, it was my custom, for the time, to eat 
with them. The " dinner " was accordingly usually 
put up in a basket and carried to the school 
room, where, after dismission at noon, we soon 
despatched it. 

Being a boarder in a family in low circumstances, 
who had Indian cakes occasionally, I was not a 
little surprised one day at noon, on uncovering the 
contents of the dinner basket at the school room, 
to find little in it but " johnny cake ! " My whole 
soul revolted. Make a dinner of cold johnny cake ! 



124 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

I said to myself. Who ever heard of a school- 
master's eating such stuff for his dinner ? And 
what will be said by the pupils of other families, 
when they see their teacher partaking of such 
coarse fare ? — However, there was another side to 
the question. I must eat it or go without my din- 
ner; and if I went without, the children of the 
family with whom I boarded would report it, and 
offence might be given. So that on the whole I 
concluded it best to set myself to work and eat my 
temperate dinner. 

The first mouthful went down with difficulty. 
After eating a few moments, the whole face of 
things was altered. The dinner tasted very well, 
except that I could hardly help shivering to think 
of it. I was not a little surprised to find that it 
relished so much better than I expected. In short, 
I found njyself alive at the end of the repast, and 
awaked in health the next morning ! — the johnny 
cake to the contrary notwithstanding. 

This was a valuable lesson to me, though it did 
not wholly cure me of my prejudices against Indian 
cakes of a proper temperature, or temperate food 
i'n:general.=^ It taught me, however, to make the 

* I here say temperate, because it is not strictly correct to 
call food which is kept in our closets and cellars, at their 
usual temperature, cold. It causes a mental shivering with 
the fastidious, which is wholly unnecessary. 



INDIAN CORN. 125 

best of circumstances ; and that where I could not 
have things just as I might desire, there was still 
room for enjoyment, would I but be cheerful and 
think so. 

I am quite at a loss to account for the prejudice 
that exists in many parts of our country, against 
plain, simple articles of food. To say that a per- 
son lives on bread and water, is to say that he lives 
like a hermit or a criminal ; therefore it is hardly 
to be wondered at, that bread and water, though 
among the best, and richest, and most nutritive of 
the Creator's gifts to man, as food and drink, are 
despised and rejected, and unfashionable ; and that 
to say a man lives on these from choice, is nearly 
equivalent to saying he is either in a state ap- 
proaching to starvation, or is a maniac. But how 
the prejudice should have arisen against the usual 
preparations of corn, especially plain cakes made 
of it ; or how a measure of the same prejudice 
should come to exist against almost all simples, 
such as boiled rice, beans, potatoes, bread and 
milk, &c., is more difficult to conceive. 

One might be disposed to beheve that our stand- 
ard of valuation and that of the Creator are as 
widely different from each other as the two poles. 
He has dealt out to us, with a most unsparing 
hand, the richest blessings — light, heat, air, water, 
fruits and grains. The first four cost us almost 



126 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

nothing, and the two last comparatively little. And 
yet these we call vulgar, and attach value to and 
associate pleasure with things which are more 
doubtful, or exceedingly rare. We are ready to 
thank God for his benefits in general ; but who 
ever thinks of thanking him specially for hght, air 
or water, or for corn, potatoes or apples ? Who 
would not be much more likely to return thanks — 
at least with more thankfulness — for a pebble 
called a diamond, and valued at a most enormous 
price because of its scarcity, for a few little pieces 
of gold or silver, or for a cup of Chinese herb tea, 
a chicken pie, or a pie from Strasbourg ? ^ 

I am not ashamed to belong to a race of beings 
so unreasonable, and guilty of such obvious con- 
tradictions ; but I am somewhat ashamed of my- 
self, that it should have taken me more than thirty 
years to learn to value things somewhat as the 
Creator does ; and I am still more ashamed that 
I have done and am still doing so little to teach 
others what I have learned in the school of Divine 
Providence, from a long and painful, but most 
merciful experience. 

* Very fashionable mince pies are made at Strasbourg, in 
France, from the diseased livers of geese, or other animals. 
These pies are now brought, in some instances, to this 
country, especially to Philadelphia, and our other large 
Qities. 



INDIAN CORN. 127 

Warm Cakes. — I have said distinctly that food 
of the kind of which I am speaking should not be 
used warm ; and I have given my reasons. If, 
however, any individual cannot yet relish a meal 
of hulled corn, or of cold cake without condiments, 
let him begin with one or the other, as warm as 
may be agreeable, and let him gradually diminish 
the temperature, from day to day, or at least from 
week to week, till he has brought it down to that 
of the surrounding atmosphere — to 60-* or 65°. 
Let him do so, I mean, if he is not wanting in 
faith, and a strong and determined will. With 
these last, the process need not be tedious. Confi- 
dence or faith and a strong will, may remove — and 
that speedily, too — whole mountains of difficulty. 

Parched Corn. — This deserves a better repu- 
tation than it has generally received. Parched 
grain was a great favorite in ancient times, in 
Palestine and other eastern countries ; and is one 
of the best kinds of food which can be eaten ; 
provided, however, sufficient pains is taken to mas- 
ticate it thoroughly. A breakfast of parched 
Indian corn once or twice a week, is admirable. 

The labor of cooking it is not great ; especially 
as a large quantity may be prepared at once ; for 
it may be preserved, in perfection, several weeks. 
I repeat it, I regard parched com as one of the 



128 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Staples in human diet, and worthy of far more 
attention, than in modern times it has received. 

I have recently learned from good authority, 
that great use is made of parched corn in South 
America, especially by the armies of Peru. With 
nothing but a sack of parched corn, and a species 
of leaf which they chew, the Peruvian soldiers 
have been known to perform journeys of six or 
seven hundred miles, at the rate of sixty miles a 
day, without much fatigue — a swiftness to us al- 
most incredible. 

Boiled Pudding. — The next most wholesome 
preparation of Indian meal, is in the form of boiled 
pudding. This, to him who would be " perfect," 
should be several hours old before it is eaten — 
perhaps a day is not too much — and nothing need 
be added in order to make it palatable. If, how- 
ever, there are those who cannot at once receive 
this doctrine, let them take a similar course to that 
prescribed in a preceding paragraph, in relation to 
Indian cakes, until they can. 

A person to whom this part of my manuscript 
was submitted, revolted from the statement of the 
preceding paragraph, and said I was going too far. 
I asked if it could be shown that I was going any 
farther than the truth. — Now I am not ignorant 
of the public feeling on the subject of eating cold 



INDIAN CORN. 129 

boiled pudding. " It is as heavy as lead to the 
human stomach," multitudes will say. Now if 
any one will eat no more of it when it is hot than 
when it is cold, I will not so loudly complain 
of the heat. But I nevet yet knew a person 
of good appetite, who made a full dinner of hot 
pudding, without experiencing dulness, or drowsi- 
ness, or pain after it. The truth is, that if we 
have a good appetite, we shall eat quite enough 
of the article in question at twenty-four hours old ; 
and the additional quantity we should be apt to eat 
in consequence of its being heated, would be just so 
much more than health or a good appetite renders 
desirable, and would injure rather than benefit us. 

Brown Bread. — Next to this comes the brown 
bread of Massachusetts and some other parts of 
New England — made of rye flour and Indian 
meal. This, when composed of a large proportion 
of the latter, and unferraented, is a very tolerable 
sort of food, especially the crusts. Fermentation 
renders it sweeter, and to most old fashioned 
palates more agreeable ; but when a person has 
accustomed himself to using it unfermented, he 
will relish it quite as well ; and it is, in my view, 
more wholesome. 

I can hardly forbear to mention, in this place, a 
fact in my own history. Six years ago, I had an 
9 



130 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Utter hatred of the brown bread of which I am 
speaking. It appeared to me not merely tasteless 
and insipid, like bran and sawdust, but positively 
disgusting. 

Becoming fully convinced, however, that this 
form of bread must be wholesome, and being a 
boarder in a family where there was no bread 
which I deemed preferable, I resolved to eat it 
daily ; usually for my breakfast. I selected the 
latter season for eating it, because in the morning 
our appetite is most keen, as well as most perfect. 
Before six months had elapsed, I had not only 
conquered my dislike, but had acquired a fondness 
for it ; and now, few articles of food give me more 
pleasure. Indeed, there are few things on which 
I could live exclusively, from day to day, and from 
month to month, with as much pleasure as brown 
bread. 

It is highly desirable to devise some method 
of making this form of bread a little more dry 
than is customary with us. It is not unfrequently 
prepared in very large loaves, with all the interior 
of the loaf as soft almost as a baked pudding. 
Nay, it is not only soft, but watery. It can, 
indeed, be sliced and laid on plates and suffered to 
dry ; but this appears to detract from its richness. 
Until some method can be devised of making it a 
little more solid without over baking, the best way 



INDIAN CORN. 131 

is to toast it slowly. Great care should be used, 
however, in toasting bread, not to bum it, or even 
render it too crispy, as this would be unfavorable 
to digestion. It should be dried rather than toasted. 
But the process of toasting in any way, is a pro- 
cess which requires considerable care and labor. 

Baked Pudding. — This may be made as sim- 
ply and rendered as wholesome as boiled pudding. 
The usual accompaniments of suet, sugar, mo- 
lasses, &;c., are by no means indispensable. Pre- 
pared for the oven in the same simple way as the 
meal is prepared for cakes which are roasted by 
the fire, it makes a very superior article of human 
diet. Of course the suet, molasses, Stc, usually 
added to it, must be omitted. The only possible 
objection to such a course is, that it does not 
require much mastication, and is almost universally 
eaten hot. Eaten cold, by which I mean cool, 
and without the addition of concentrated sub- 
stances, it is by no means unfavorable to health 
and longevity, though cakes baked hard would 
unquestionably be preferable. 

Hasty Pudding. — Willich says that hasty pud- 
ding, on account of its tenacity and the quantity 
of mucilage it contains, is not so easily digested as 
people who feed their infants upon it are apt to 



132 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

imagine. I am quite of his opinion in regard to 
the digestibility of this substance, but not for the 
reasons he assigns. The grand objection is, that 
it requires, or at least receives, little or no mastica- 
tion. This, indeed, is the principal difficulty with 
a great many sorts of food so constantly said 
by dietetic writers to be indigestible. They are 
highly nutritious in their nature ; but they are 
ground or beaten so as to form a complete paste 
that will almost slide down the throat, as fast as it 
is put into the mouth ; and lastly, molasses, butter, 
oil, sauces or gravies, are applied to hurry them 
beyond the reach of the teeth and salivary glands, 
as fast as possible. 

The finer hommony, or that which is so frequently 
called samp, is liable to some of the very objec- 
tions which I have urged against hasty pudding, 
especially that which relates to mastication. I 
never knew a child who was indulged largely and 
frequently in hasty pudding and milk, or hasty 
pudding and molasses, who had not a sour stomach, 
or worms in the intestines, or both. Few things 
are more deceptive to children or adults, than 
these soft lazy dishes ; such I mean as glide down 
into the stomach without any trouble to chew 
them. They are deceptive because they seem to 
sit so smoothly on the stomach, while in reality 
they are over-tasking it. They compel it to do 



INDIAN COHN. 133 

that which should in part have been done in the 
mouth ; and this produces mischief in two ways ; — 
first, by the over-tasking which I have alluded to — 
and secondly, by the want of action on the part 
of the teeth and salivary glands. 

Loaf Bread. — In travelling among the Dutch 
population of this country, I have sometimes met 
with loaf bread made wholly of Indian meal. I 
do not think it so good as the cakes, yet I believe 
it deserves a better reputation than it would be 
likely to receive among us, who are of English 
origin. I am wholly ignorant of the particular 
method of preparing this article of food ; but it 
does not seem to me to be very well raised. 

Dumplings. — Boiled Indian dumplings are a 
very inferior kind of food, except for domestic 
animals. To the sick or the well, they are the 
worst form of food from Indian meal which I have 
ever seen, except some of those which follow. 

Meat Bread. — I have met with a kind of 
bread made principally of Indian meal, but with 
the addition of finely chopped lean meat. Such 
bread, although evidently nutritious enough, is 
inferior to almost every other kind that could be 
named. The name I have usually heard applied 



134 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

to it is crackling bread. The term meat bread is 
wholly of my own invention. 

Gruel. — Where a gentle laxative is required, 
and nothing seems to be more convenient or better 
adapted to the purpose, than gruel of Indian meal, 
it is not at all objectionable. But as an article 
of daily food for invalids, especially for those 
whose stomachs are weak, it seems to me pecu- 
liarly improper. It is much harder of digestion 
than solid food ; which is one reason for the prohi- 
bition. The same objections, in substance, exist in 
relation to it which were mentioned in speaking 
of hasty pudding. It is not masticated ; and the 
nutriment it contains, forming a concentrated sedi- 
ment in the stomach, is digested with very great 
difficulty. 

Green Corn. — I have hitherto said nothing of 
corn boiled before it is ripe ; though there are 
several fashionable dishes of this sort among us. 

The first is the boiled ears. These, if simply 
boiled in water, with no addition but that of a 
little salt, form a tolerably nutritious and very 
sweet food ; but green corn can never be a,s whole- 
some as that which is ripe. I know it is customary 
with many writers on diet to denounce this article 
of food, in toto ; but they do not give us sufficient 



INDIAN CORN. 135 

reasons for their denunciations. It is, indeed, an 
article of food which I never eat ; but my reasons 
are — I find so many better disiies that I cannot 
feel justified in the use of one which is worse ; that 
it is a waste to use the green ears of corn in this 
way ; and that I seldom find it at tables in a 
proper state. It is very often boiled with meat or 
other greasy food, which renders it peculiarly unfit 
for the stomach. No article, perhaps, forms so 
unwholesome a mass for the stomach, when in 
combination with oily or greasy substances, as 
green corn. Some add butter, but this is still 
worse. The combination of green corn and green 
beans, called by its Indian name, suckotash, is 
far from being among the most wholesome, even 
without the accustomed seasoning. Both articles 
are better eaten alone, after they have attained to 
maturity. The same remarks, in general, which 
have been applied, in this paragraph, to boiled ears 
of corn, apply also to those which are roasted. 

Polenta. — Cora meal mixed with cheese, says 
Dr. Dunglison, and baked into a kind of pudding, 
forms the dish which the Italians call polenta. It 
is, however, extremely indigestible. 

There is a great variety of forms of cookery, 
into which Indian meal, notwithstanding its sup- 



136 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

posed vulgarity, sometimes enters, but I forbear to 
mention them here. The very name of pancakes 
or fritters, whether with or without apples or other 
fruits, and whether with or without oysters, is 
enough, almost, to give one an attack of dyspepsia ; 
and fried hasty pudding is still worse. There is 
no special, or at least serious, evil in warming 
over a mass of cold hasty pudding; but when 
we add the frying process, it is too much ; and if I 
ever wish for sumptuary laws at all, it is when I 
think of that parent of a thousand evils, fried 
hasty pudding. 

Indian meal is apt to heat and ferment, and thus 
sustain injury during the summer. It should, 
therefore, like wheat and rye meal, be kept in a 
cool, airy place ; and in a quantity not too large ; 
and should be often stirred and exposed to the 
air. 



CHAPTER X. 



FOOD FROM RYE. 

Extensive use of rye. Brown bread. Rye bread. Mixed 
bread. Biscuit, &c. Unleavened cakes. Gingerbread, 
Puddings. Gruel, 

Some may be surprised that I should place rye, 
in point of excellence, next in order to Indian 
corn, and before rice ; but this appears to me its 
appropriate place. In the north of Europe, it is 
the principal source of sustenance ; and after 
wheat, nourishes the greater portion of the popu- 
lation of that continent. It forms the bread of 
nearly twenty millions of the French nation alone. 
Even in many parts of New England it forms a 
very large proportion of the ordinary diet. 

There is, however, a very great difference in 
the character of the rye itself, not only as respects 
its whiteness, but its flavor. Much of this differ- 
ence depends upon the manner of raising it ; and 
still more, perhaps, upon the manner of preparing 
it. With milk and good yeast, I have seen it 
almost equal to wheat, both in point of lightness 



138 THE YOUNG HODSE-KEEPEB 

and whiteness, notwithstanding the deficiency of 
gluten which many writers represent as so fatal to 
its excellence ; and even without the milk it makes 
excellent bread. In one word, I believe its quali- 
ties and wholesomeness have hitherto been greatly 
underrated. 

Brown Breab. — I have already spoken of the 
brown bread, so common among us — formed from 
rye and Indian. The proportion of these two 
ingredients may vary at the pleasure of those who 
prepare it ; and wheat meal, as well as barley 
and oat meal, and even rice flour, may be added 
for the benefit of those prefer it. 

Rye Bread. — Notwithstanding the preference 
given by many — and even by myself — to brown 
bread, great numbers of the people of New Eng- 
land regard the latter as dry and insipid, and some 
as offensive ; while they think bread made of rye 
alone is peculiarly tasteful and agreeable. So 
powerful is habit, and so much is the taste subject 
to it. Rye bread, however, is by no means an 
inferior sort of bread ; it has been the principal 
diet of thousands of New England's hardiest, 
healthiest, most enterprising sons, and of some of 
her most distinguished literary men.. The Journal 
of Health says rye bread requires rather more 



FOOD FROM RYE. 139 

salt than any other bread ; but this cannot be 
true, as some of the best rye bread I have ever 
eaten was made wholly without salt. It is, how- 
ever, generally added by house-keepers in small 
quantity, especially in making bread of rye alone. 

Mixed Bread. — There are several mixed breads 
into which rye enters, which are very much ap- 
proved of in families. One is called the third 
bread ; consisting of wheat, rye and Indian, one 
third eacho Another, which I regard as still 
sweeter and better, is the mixture of rye and 
Indian I have already mentioned ; but I am not able 
to state the usual proportions. Another still — and 
I deem it preferable to all others — consists of two 
fifths rye and three fifths wheat. This is usually 
prepared by making a paste or dough of the wheat 
alone, and as soon as the fermentation has com- 
menced, working in the rye meal, moistened with 
water. 

Biscuit, &;c. — A plain, but excellent sort of 
biscuits, is made of rye flour wet with milk. 
Crackers of rye flour have also sometimes been 
made, but not so often. Rye puddings are more 
common, but are liable to the general objections 
brought against all puddings ; although, if their 
use be at all admissible, rye puddings of coarse 



140 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

meal — rye mush — is among the most wholesome. 
Rye dough nuts and gingerbread are better — much 
better — than those which are made of superfine 
wheat flour ; although many fashionable people, 
who never saw a particle of rye flour used except 
to form the brown bread already spoken of, would 
find it somewhat difficult to believe it. 

Unleavened Cakes. — These might have been 
put first. But there is such a prejudice against 
unleavened bread of any sort, that having encoun- 
tered it for once, viz., in the article on wheat, I 
seem to shrink from it, with a dread almost instinc- 
tive. And yet why should I ? Dr. Cullen, more 
than half a century ago, ventured to defend it. 
"The whole people of Asia," says he, "live upon 
unfermented rice. In Scotland, nine tenths of the 
lower classes of the people — and that is the greater 
part of the whole — live upon unfermented bread 
and unfermented farinacea in other forms, and yet 
I am of opinion that there is not a more healthy 
people anywhere to be found." And Dr. Paris, 
who wrote almost half a century later than Dr. 
Cullen, says that " where leavened or fermented 
bread does not agree," the use of that which is 
unleavened " cannot be too strongly advocated." 

Under the sanction, then, of authority so high, 
I may venture to say, that the best form of rye 



FOOD FROM RYE. 141 

bread, after all, Is that of unfermented cakes baked 
upon the hearth or elsewhere, and eaten when of a 
proper age. 

Those who object to them, on the ground of 
their tendency to produce consumption — a sort of 
traditional belief among us — do not in reality object 
to the cakes themselves, eaten cool, and with no 
accompaniments ; for though this is the only way in 
which they should be eaten, it is precisely the way 
in which nobody eats them. They are commonlj, 
perhaps I should say universally, eaten with butter, 
and while hot — when they are as unfit for the human 
stomach as can be conceived. But let them be a 
day or two old, and then eat them as loaf bread 
commonly is or should be eaten, and we shall no 
longer hear of their being injurious. They will 
be as wholesome, to say the least, as any other 
form of bread into which rye enters. 

Gingerbread. — If gingerbread is allowable at 
all, it is nearly as good made of rye as of wheat. 
But as I have already said, those who make this 
form of cake should omit the ginger, and only add 
a small quantity of molasses. If rye is ground 
coarsely and neither bolted nor sifted, unless it be 
to remove a very small quantity of its coarser parts, 
it will make bread or cake but little inferior to that 
which is produced from wheat. 



142 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Puddings. — To puddings made of rye meal or 
flour, I have already objected, at sufficient length. 
But there is one species of pudding— if it deserve 
the name of pudding — which is much more tolera- 
ble. I allude to boiled or steamed loaves of stale 
bread. They need not be eaten hot. They are 
excellent twelve hours after they have been re- 
vived by the steaming process, and seem, even at 
this age, to possess all or nearly all of their original 
freshness. 

Gruel. — Rye gruel — usually considered very 
healthy — is of course a liquid; and — 1 repeat it 
once more — I object to liquid food, so long as 
solids are admissible. As a medicine, it is, like 
gruel made of Indian or wheat meal, often very 
useful. 

Rye meal should be kept in a cool, airy place, 
especially in summer. It should also be occa- 
sionally stirred. It is said that a large stone put 
in the middle of a barrel of rye or Indian meal, 
will help to keep it cool. Probably this is mere 
tradition. 



CHAPTER XI. 



RICE. 



Rice extensively used. Mistaken notion of its producing 
costiveness and blindness. Boiled rice. Baked rice. Rice 
bread. Rice and milk. 

No substance which enters into the human 
stomach, and which is at the same time perfectly 
inoffensive, has been more slandered than rice. 
On the one hand, it has been said to be an innu- 
tritious, feeble substance ; on the other, it has been 
said to be an active poison. It has been charged 
with producing costiveness, blindness, and even in 
some instances the cholera. 

The truth is, that rice is one of the most nutri- 
tious substances in the world ; as may be seen from 
the tables in a former chapter. I know, as I have 
already said, that it will be hard for many people 
to believe this. Because meat stimulates more, 
and gives more momentary warmth and strength, it 
I is therefore insisted that it contains more nutriment. 
I On the same principle, it might be proved that 
I alcohol is highly nutritious ; whereas all the alcohol 



144 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

in the world does not contain a particle of that 
which can nourish us or make blood. 

Nor does rice tend directly to produce costive- 
ness. The most that can be said against it is, that 
it is not very active on the stomach and bowels — 
and in our climate, and especially when trained as 
our stomachs and intestines are, to the action of 
substances much more stimulating and irritating, 
seems to have the effect of producing costiveness. 
But to the eastern nations who are trained to it — 
even without the curry sauce so largely used in 
many places — it has no constipating qualities. Let 
our children and youth be trained, from the first, to 
a pretty full proportion of rice with their food, and 
let them use other simple, wholesome, unstimulating 
things, and we shall hear little more of its tendency 
to costiveness. 

As to its producing blindness, I have sought, 
these ten years, for evidence on this subject ; but 
have never found a particle. The nearest approach 
to evidence I have met with, is the statement of a 
very worthy old man, that he knew a case of the 
kind in Maine. But every one knows how many 
other causes might have contributed to produce 
such a result as was stated. If this substance 
could cause blindness, we ought to hear of such 
facts from China, Japan, and other parts of Asia ; 
especially since the establishment of eye infirma- 



RICE. ^ 145 

ries by the missionaries in those regions ; but no 
such developments have, to my knowledge, ever 
been made. In short, I regard the whole as a 
base slander ; and the charge that it produces 
cholera, no less so. Neither of the charges ever 
was, or — I venture to affirm it — ever can be sub- 
stantiated. 

Boiled Rice. — The best, or at least the simplest 
mode of preparing rice, is boiling it in pure water. 
After careful washing, it should be boiled in such 
a way that it is completely soft, and swelled to its 
full size, but not broken and reduced to a pulp. 
The Hindoos, I am told, boil it till they reduce it 
to a perfect paste ; but I can never believe it so 
wholesome, prepared in this way. On the other 
hand, it should be cooked thoroughly ; for I have 
known considerable temporary disturbance produced 
in the bowels, by eating it when it contained por- 
tions of the kernel which were hard and uncooked. 
It is difficult to masticate rice, unless the grains are 
left whole, and swelled to their fullest size. 

Baked Rice. — Next to boiling, baking is the 
most proper method of cooking this substance. 
Indeed, some prefer baking to boiling. It is 
equally simple ; and to those who use cooking 
stoves, perhaps more easy and more economicaL 
10 



146 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Rice, whether baked or boiled, is best eaten 
alone ; or at least with no additions except a very- 
little salt. If, however, anything must be added, 
milk poured on it is best — and next to that, a little 
molasses. Butter, sweet oil, and all sorts of sauces 
on rice are highly injurious. Honey is not so good 
as molasses, or sugar, or milk. I do not say it will 
be well to eat nothing but naked rice from one 
year's end to another, or even from one day to 
another. All I say is, that when we eat a meal 
of rice, it is preferable, in point of health, that we 
should eat it alone. 

A great deal is said by dietetic writers, about 
the necessity of eating something with our rice. 
" If taken in large quantities, by itself," says Dr. 
Paris, " from its low degree of stimulant proper- 
ties, it is apt to remain for a length of time in the 
stomach." And again he says — '' where the sto- 
mach is in a state of relaxation and debihty, it 
ought not to be taken without condiment." 

But why should it be eaten in large quantities, 
at all ? I do not hesitate to admit, that if thus 
eaten, it will lie long in the stomach. It is so pure 
a nutriment that no stomach, let it be ever so 
strong, ought ever to receive it in large quantities. 
If, however, this injunction should be disregarded 
or disobeyed, I have no doubt most kinds of con- 
diments would, for the time, have a good effect. 



RICE. 147 

They would operate upon it like whip and spurs 
upon an overloaded horse ; they would urge it 
forward for the moment, but it would be at the 
expense of the future. There might be sound 
philosophy in eating a moderate quantity of thin, 
hard-baked, fermented cakes or wafers with our 
rice, for the sake of the mastication. 

Baked rice puddings are by no means very ex- 
ceptionable, if nothing is mixed with the rice but 
a little milk and molassfes. But when eggs and 
condiments of various sorts are added, they are not 
so wholesome. 

Experience teaches that rice is not so good when 
first boiled, as after the lapse of six, nine, or twelve 
hours. Even three or four days after it is boiled, 
especially in cool weather and when kept in a cool 
place, it retains all its excellent properties. 

Rice Bread. — Of this substance, in any of its 
forms, I know very little ; and all directions, here 
or elsewhere, will be either theoretical or borrowed. 
I suppose that on the general principle, that every 
substance is best by itself, rice would not be so 
good mixed with flour or meal of any sort, and 
made into bread. But there is one thing to coun- 
terbalance all this. Formed into bread, it is more 
apt to be subjected to the processes of mastication 
and insahvation, than it is when eaten alone. For 



148 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

all Other purposes except to make bread of some 
sort, I dislike the grinding of rice into flour at all ; 
and if ground, I dislike its use. 

Rice and Milk. — This is a very palatable 
mixture, but so exceedingly quiet, in its immediate 
effects on the stomach, and it slides down the 
throat so easily, that we are peculiarly apt to err 
in regard to quantity when we use it. If used at 
all, let it be used with great caution ; and it were 
somewhat better that the rice were eaten by itself, 
and the milk drank afterward, than that they 
should be mixed before eating. 

I must conclude my remarks on rice by saying, 
that while I reject the false notions of its deficiency 
in nutritive properties, of its tendency to costive- 
ness, and above all, of its sometimes causing blind- 
ness, its use is not without danger ; but it is, on 
account of its being so purely nutritious, that almost 
everybody who uses it, is apt to take too large 
quantities. I know a minister of high standing 
who has lived for years in no small degree on rice, 
and maccaroni, and other simple articles of the 
most nutritive kinds — but who, in the belief that 
these contain comparatively little nutriment, is 
almost constantly injuring his stomach by them. 
This error seems to me one of the most difficult to 
remove in the whole range of dietetics. 



CHAPTER XII. 



BARLEY AND OATS. 

Barley much used in Europe. Its properties. Mixed bread. 
Pearl barley. Oats. 

Barley is but little raised in this country ; and 
when used, is seldom converted into bread. On 
the eastern continent its use is quite common, and 
has been so time immemorial. 

The proportion of the principle called gluten, in 
this grain, is so small, that alone it does not make 
very light bread. Wheat, as my readers already 
know, contains the glutinous principle in greatest 
abundance, and therefore it is, among other rea- 
sons, that it makes the lightest loaves. Wheat 
contains, with seventy-five parts in one hundred 
of starch, twelve of gluten ; rye, with sixty parts 
of starch, eight of gluten ; and barley, with thirty- 
two of starch, three of gluten. As the nutritive 
parts of farinaceous vegetables are principally con- 
tained in these two principles, it will be seen, not 
only that wheat and rye are most nutritive, but 
also that they are by far the most glutinous and 



150 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

best fitted for loaf bread. Still, barley is very 
good ; and were not our American soil so happily 
adapted to the production of wheat, rye, or Indian 
corn, might be very serviceable. 

There is one kind of mixed bread into which 
barley enters, which is comparatively excellent. 
It is made of equal parts of wheat, rye and bar- 
ley. The dough is made of the wheat meal, and 
the meal of the two other grains is added after 
fermentation of the mass has begun. 

In our own country, the principal use made 
of barley as food, is in the form of gruel. This 
for the sick or weak is often admirable. Most of 
tlie apothecaries' shops keep it for this purpose 
under the name of pearl barley. 

Oats. — The farmers of Ireland and Scotland find 
themselves strong, and healthy, and happy, on oaten 
bread ; and many hundred thousands in those coun- 
tries, especially in Scotland — ^to say nothing of her 
philosophers — have little other nutriment but oat 
meal and potatoes. But in our own country very 
little of this kind of bread has been used ; nor is it 
necessary, since we have so many other substances 
which are preferable. The Scotch use it most in 
the form of unleavened cakes, which, if eaten cool, 
are probably healthier than loaves. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE POTATOE. 

Importance of the potatoe as an article of diet. Modes of 
cooking it — boiling, baking, steaming and roasting. Bad 
boiling. Examples of a better mode. Cooking a potatoe 
well, seldom understood. The " civic crown." Mashed 
potatoes. Potatoe bread. Potatoes and milk. Potatoe 
soup. " Hash." Fried potatoes. The potatoe sometimes 
poisonous. 



Too much importance can hardly be attached 
to an article which forms the principal support 
of many millions, an'd the partial support of a still 
larger number. I believe most of the civilized 
countries of Europe use this valuable root more 
CM* less freely — and that it is daily gaining favor. 

In many parts of the United States, and espe- 
cially in New England, it forms one of the staple 
productions of the soil, and ranks among the prin- 
cipal articles of food for man and for beast. Here, 
too, its use has been, till recently, constantly 
increasing. At the present time, especially among 
tlie fashionable, there is an increasing tendency to 
regard it as somewhat vulgar. It seems to be 



152 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

sharing the same fate, or nearly the same, with 
bread ; which, though acknowledged to be a highly 
useful article, is considered insipid when compared 
with rolls, rusks, bunns, puddings, cakes, and the 
various forms of pastry — and the use of which, 
seems only tolerated as a sort of penance. 

There 'are many varieties of the potatoe. In 
their properties they do not, however, materially 
differ, except in a single instance. The sweet 
potatoe is much more cloying, in its nature, than 
the rest, on account of the larger proportion it 
contains of saccharine matter ; it is also rather 
harder of digestion. Besides, it is more nutritious 
than any other variety. Sweeter, however, as it is, 
and consequently less happily adapted to the pur- 
poses of daily food, it is subject to the same general 
rules in preparing it for the table. 

Following out the general principle, that the 
simpler the method of cooking the better for 
health, it is not difficult to say what are the best 
methods of preparing this valuable esculent. Boil- 
ing, baking, steaming and roasting, are all of them 
simple processes, and none of them objectionable. 
If there be a preference, it is in favor of roasting 
in the fire. 

To the pure appetite, there is a richness of the 
potatoe roasted in hot embers, for which we look in 
vain elsewhere. Perhaps it is owing to the fact, 



THE POTATOE. 153 

that all its properties are preserved unimpaired ; 
whereas, in boiling, if none of its properties are 
actually lost, some of them may be impaired. 

The best method of roasting the potatoe, is to 
take away the ashes of a good fire quite to the 
hearth, lay down the potatoes in a single layer, 
cover them with hot embers to the depth of an 
inch or so, and then build a good fire over them. 
In this way, and m a reasonable time, they will 
usually be found light and excellent. Once it 
was thought necessary, first to fill the interstices 
and just cover the surface with cold ashes, before 
putting on the hot embers ; but the former mode 
is preferable. 

Those who wish to be very nice, may find it 
pleasant to wrap each potatoe, when well washed, 
in a piece of brown paper, wetted just so that it 
will adhere, before committing it to the embers. 
In this way it comes forth in a more cleanly 
condition, and is sooner made ready for the table. 
This method is also preferable for those who eat 
the skins. The latter I do not recommend ; but 
like the skins of apples, as well as many other 
vegetables, if not too much changed by cookery, 
and if well masticated,, the skins cannot be particu- 
larly objectionable. 

The various methods of baking and steaming 
this article need no particular description in this 



154 THE YOtTNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

place. Next to roasting in the embers, they are 
unquestionably the best in use, and some regard 
them as preferable even to roasting. 

Boiling is the most universal mode of cooking 
the potatoe. It is, moreover, a very convenient 
proqgss. More care, however, is required to render 
it dry and mealy than in roasting, steaming or 
baking ; and strange as the assertion may seem, 
there are very many house-keepers who suppose 
themselves perfect in the art of cookery, who do 
not understand the art of boiling potatoes. 

Some do not boil them enough. This, however, 
is not so serious an evil ; since we are not obliged 
to eat the inner, unboiled portion. But a still 
greater number do not boil them well. 

One reason why boiled potatoes sometimes are 
not good is, that they are unripe or otherwise 
imperfect. Potatoes, in order to be perfect, should 
be planted in a proper soil, and at a proper season ; 
and if manure is used at all, it should be that sort 
of manure which is best adapted to the crop itself, 
and also to the kind of soil to which it is applied. 
There is a certain kind of relation, I should rather 
say opposition, in the character of soils and ma- 
nures, which deserves to be attended to. For 
want of the necessary knowledge on this subject, 
or for want of a disposition to use the knowledge 
which is possessed, a large proportion of the pota- 



THE POTATOE. "* 155 

toes which are used in our families are more or 
less watery, or at least far from being as mealy 
as they might be. The more mealy a potatoe is, 
as a general rule, the better flavored and more 
healthy it is ; but of those which are truly mealy, 
there is a great difference in their flavor. A 
truly perfect potatoe, perfectly roasted, steamed or 
boiled, is almost as delicate an article of food as a 
loaf of bread, though not so nutritious. 

The best and most perfect potatoes may be so 
badly boiled as to be comparatively unfit for the 
table, while those which, though mealy, are some- 
what inferior in ricjaness and flavor, may, by supe- 
rior cookery, be rendered vastly their superiors. 

Potatoes may be boiled either with or without 
the skin ; but I prefer the former mode until some 
time in the winter, after which it is best to pare 
them. Great care should be taken to see that 
they are thoroughly washed in the first place. No 
judicious farmer will neglect this point, even in 
boiling them for his swine or catde — ^how much 
more, then, should it be attended to in their pre- 
paration for the table ! 

The water should boil before the potatoes are 
put into it ; and the quantity of water should be 
so great, if practicable, that the boiling may con- 
tinue, notwithstanding the quantity of heat suddenly 
abstracted by their addition and presence. 



4» 



156 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

When they are boiled, the water should be sud- 
denly poured off. Then they may be immediately 
taken up, or may remain in the covered pot a 
few moments till they become thoroughly dry. I 
believe they are rather more mealy in the latter 
case, than if taken up wet with the water in which 
they are boiled. 

Some boil them so long that they fall to pieces 
in the pot, and become soaked ; or at least they 
become injured in this way before they reach the 
table. Others boil them so slowly that they appear 
to lose much of their excellence. The more rapid 
the boiling, and the shorter the time they remain 
in the vessel, provided the process of boiling is 
thorough and complete, the better. 

It has been said, and I think with truth, that 
while the boiling of potatoes is an art which 
belongs to every house-keeper, scarcely one in a 
hundred appears to understand it. Many even 
seem to think an occasional failure unavoidable. 

The American lady, says the Boston Medical 
Intelligencer for October, 1826, who shall teach 
her sex how to boil a potatoe, will deserve public 
honors and a civic crown. This may, at first 
view, seem a reward rather above the merit of the 
discovery ; but are we quite sure it is so ? 

" There are, we will suppose," says the work 
referred to, " ten millions of potatoes put into the 



THE POTATOE. 157 

pot every day, in these States ; of which, proba- 
bly, not more than two millions come out fit to eat. 
Now the difference between seven or eight mil- 
lions of potatoes well or ill cooked, daily, is no 
small concern, especially if we multiply the amount 
by three hundred and sixty-five, to make it a 
yearly statement. 

" We know that soil, climate and season have 
their favorable or unfavorable influence on this 
vegetable ; but it is still true, that bad cookery 
spoils more potatoes, otherwise good, than all the 
droughts, inundations, heats and colds, and bad 
soils, in this country. Count Rumford, in one 
of his essays, speaking of potatoes, as much in 
reference to the mode of boiling them, as of their 
native properties, says, an Englishman knows noth- 
ing of the luxury of an Irish potatoe." 

Potatoes, to be perfect in this way, should be 
boiled entirely alone ; except, perhaps, with the 
addition of a little salt. The old custom of boiling 
them with other vegetables is objectionable, but 
less so than that of boiling them with meat, espe- 
cially fat meat. The last custom is more than 
objectionable ; it is, to a pure stomach, next to 
intolerable. 

It is commonly said that a potatoe is most 
agreeable immediately after it is boiled ; and to 
those who cannot eat anything which is not hot . 



158 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

enough to endanger their mouths, it may be so. 
But it is more wholesome and scarcely less mealy 
a short time after boiling, when it has had time to 
cool a little ; and to an un perverted taste and good 
appetite, quite as agreeable. It is even pleasant 
and wholesome for twenty-four hours or more after 
boiling, to those who are accustomed to its use ; 
and nothing is more common than for laborers to 
prefer it six, eight or twelve hours after boiling. 
That it is more heavy, as it is termed, in these last 
circumstances, is no more an objection to it, where 
the relish for it is equally keen, than the fact that 
bread is more sohd, and cannot be swallowed in 
quantities so great, when cold, is an objection to 
the use of the latter. Both require more mastica- 
tion when cold than when hot ; and both are less 
. liable, when cold, to be taken in too large a quan- 
tity. And, to a reflecting mind, this is one of 
the strongest arguments which could possibly be 
brought in favor of this method of using them. 

Among the various other uses of the potatoe are 
the following. They are named in the order 
of their departure from what I consider to be its 
most perfect state, as already described. 

Mashed Potatoes. — The potatoe is least in- 
jured by simple mashing. Some persons have a 
great fondness for mashing almost everything they 



THE POTATOE. 159 

eat. The only evil to which the potatoe is then 
subjected is, that it is rendered a little softer, and 
demands a little less of trituration and insalivation. 
I do not despair, in this inventive age, of the dis- 
covery of some simple method of preparing the 
cooked potatoe in such a way, as shall tax the 
masticatory organs more than now, instead of 
diminishing their labor. 

Potatoe Bread. — Potatoes with flour, are 
sometimes used for bread. M. Parmentier, a 
French chemist, says that if the starch be collected 
from ten pounds of raw potatoes, by grating them 
into cold water and agitating the mass properly ; 
and that if the starch thus procured, be mixed 
with other ten pounds of boiled potatoes, and 
properly subjected to fermentation, like wheat flour, 
it will make as good bread as the finest wheat. I 
know not how this is, having never witnessed the 
experiment. 

In times of scarcity, however, I have repeatedly 
known good, sweet and wholesome bread, prepared 
from wheat flour and boiled potatoes, in the pro- 
portion of about eighteen pounds of the former to 
nine of the latter. Dr. Darwin speaks of this sort 
of bread in terras of high praise. Steaming or 
roasting the potatoe for the purpose, by rendering 
it more dry, would probably make the bread still 



160 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

better. From experiments recently made In Bos- 
ton, I believe that the unbolted wheat meal is better 
for the purpose than jiour. However, I regard 
this as an unnatural use of the potatoe, and unless 
in times of scarcity, of Httle value to a country 
abounding in bread stuffs which are better. 

Potatoes and Milk. — In eating the potatoe 
in milk, its character is not materially altered. The 
only serious evil which it involves, is the neglect 
of the teeth and the sahvary glands. 

Potatoe Soup. — Potatoe soup is more objec- 
tionable, because the potatoe is in a state which 
requires less mastication. If anything oily is mixed 
with the soup, it adds to its indigestibility. 

Mashing with turnips, aside from the fact that 
butter, pepper, &:c., are often added to the mix- 
ture, would not be much worse than simple mash- 
ing without any mixture. 

The addition of pepper, mustard, horse-radish, 
and above all, of vinegar, to potatoes, is an abuse 
of still greater magnitude and flagrance. The 
only condiment which ought, at most, to be used 
in this case, is a little salt. 

I have known pies made of potatoes ; but the 
potatoe is so changed, that whether injurious or 
not, it does not, in this form, deserve attention. 



4 



THE POTATOE. 161 

" Hash." — Minced victuals, or hash, that is, 
potatoes, turnips and other vegetables, chopped 
finely and mixed with meat, to which pepper and 
other condiments are added, is a still wider depar- 
ture from simple nature. The fact that so many 
healthy people eat and highly relish it, and per- 
ceive no bad effects from it, no more proves it to 
be healthy, than the fact that many healthy people 
have long used coffee and tea, and even spirits, 
with apparent impunity, proves these things also to 
be healthy. 

Mashed potatoes, with butter, gravy and other 
condiments, or potatoes in any form in connection, 
with oily substances, are fully believed to be highly 
improper for the healthy stomach. 

Fried Potatoes. — But of all human folly 
connected with the art of cooking the potatoe, is 
the practice of slicing and frying it. It is some- 
times fried alone ; at others, with apples, onions, 
and other vegetables ; and sometimes with meat. 
In some of the southern states, even the sweet 
potatoe is fried, in precisely the manner of our 
common dough nuts. 

In the spring, it is well to cut off a slice from 
the smaller or seed end of the potatoe, before it is 
cooked, because this part is apt to be watery j and 
11 



162 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

unless cut off, may injure the rest of the potatoe. 
Care should also be taken of potatoes in the spring) 
to break off the sprouts as fast as they appear. 

Potatoes keep in the freshest state in the cellar, 
if not too damp ; but I prefer putting them in an 
upper chamber or garret, as soon as the weather is 
so mild that they will not freeze. Lastly, and as 
a universal rule, potatoes and all other vegetables 
should be kept as cool as possible, provided they 
are not in any danger of being touched by frost. 

" If you wish to have potatoes mealy, do not 
let them stop boiling for an instant," says Mrs. 
Child. " In Canada, they cut the skin all off. and 
put them in pans to be cooked over a stove by 
steam. Those who have eaten them, say they 
are mealy and white looking, when brought upon 
the table, like large snow-balls." 

One thing remains to be told respecting the 
potatoe. Being of a poisonous family, everything 
which indicates imperfection in it, indicates at the 
same time, an approach to the poisonous charac- 
ter. Small potatoes, and those which, though 
large, are less mealy, are less healthy ; still it is 
not quite correct to say they are poisonous. But 
those which, during their growth, protrude from the 
earth, and have a green appearance, are believed 
to be actually poisonous. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



BEANS AND PEAS. 

Beans and peas produce flatulency. Why. How they should 
be cooked and used. Green peas and beans. Their pods. 
Bread of peas and beans. Puddings. Pea soup. Bean 
porridge. 

The complaint has been almost universal, that 
peas and beans, especially the latter, produce 
flatulence, and are heating and indigestible. Some 
even say they contain little nourishment. Nothing 
better shows the superficial views taken by most 
writers on diet, than these statements. The truth 
is, that beans and peas, instead of containing 
" little nourishment," are among the most nutri- 
tious substances which enter the human stomach. 
Indeed, it is owing to this fact, more than to any- 
thing else, that they have been accounted indiges- 
tible. There is, indeed, a great difference in both 
of them, in regard to nutritive properties ; but five 
ounces of those which are least nutritious, contain 
more nutriment than eight ounces of the best beef 
steak or ordinary butcher's meat. 



164 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

As to their heating and flatulent tendency, this 
arises, in part, from wrong methods of cookery. 
Rice prepared in the same way, that is, with fat 
meat or butter, and eaten hot and with other things 
which usually accompany beans, would produce 
the same effects, in a degree. The fault, there- 
fore, I repeat it, lies chiefly in our modes of cook- 
ing and eating them. 

They should be cooked in pure water, and 
nothing should be added to fit them for the table, 
but a little salt. They should also be eaten 
for breakfast ; and either alone or with bread. 
Those who are vigorous, and who dine as early 
as twelve o'clock, may eat them at dinner, if they 
prefer it ; but breakfast is the hest hour ; and they 
should never be eaten at evening. 

I have said they should be eaten alone, or with 
bread. At first, I would make at least two thirds 
of the meal of good coarse bread ; but I would 
afterwards gradually withdraw the bread, till the 
beans or peas constituted the principal part of the 
meal. In this way — and if the other two meals 
and our general habits were healthy — we should 
hear little more about their flatulence. 

One or two conditions more are indispensable, in 
regard to the cookery of these substances. They 
should be prepared so slowly, that they may 
remain whole as much as possible ; and ^with so 



BEANS AND PEAS. 165 

little water, that they are perfectly dry and mealy. 
They should also be ripe, or at least full grown. 
It is not only bad economy to eat peas and beans 
before they are half grown, but it is bad for 
health, or at least comparatively so. It cannot be, 
in the nature of things, that green pulse is as 
wholesome as that which is ripe. Still, green peas 
and beans, if properly cooked, are very tolerable 
food compared with many other things. They 
may be baked or boiled, but are best baked. 

The pods of beans and peas are still more 
unwholesome than their green contents. They 
are unwholesome boiled ; but they are still more 
so when pickled. The pods of the species of 
bean, frequently called in New England the cran- 
beny bean, are more wholesome, when boiled with 
the young bean itself, than most others ; but it 
were better to avoid even this. 

Let not the reader regard these views of beans 
and peas as mere theory. Daniel and his three 
friends at Babylon, are not the only persons with 
whom pulse has agreed, when eaten a^ it should 
be. I could produce others who would attest to 
the truth of what I have said, from their own 
experience. No man can be more sure of their 
flatulent tendency than I once was. Yet I can now 
eat a whole meal of either of them, once a day, 
with the most perfect impunity. The fault, I repeat 



166 THK YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

it; is not so much in the nature of the food itself, as 
in the heat, and butter, and meat, and pepper, and 
vinegar, and mashing, and softening, which are 
added. 

In some countries, and under some circum- 
stances, it has been common to form these sub- 
stances into bread. This seems to me entirely 
useless, if people would follow the directions I 
have given above ; nevertheless, for those who are 
willing to be at the trouble to prepare it, a suitable 
proportion of pea meal in bread, is by no means 
unwholesome. The best bread of this kind, is 
made of three fourths rj^e flour, and one fourth 
peas or beans. 

The meal of peas and beans is sometimes 
formed into puddings ; but in this state they are 
objectionable. It is, indeed, the same thing as to 
boil or bake them, and then form them into a pulp 
by mashing ; and is attended, usually, with the 
same results. 

Pea soup, though very grateful in cold weather, 
is neither so wholesome nor so digestible as the 
pea itself, properly baked or boiled. The same 
may be said of bean soup, or "bean porridge," as 
it was formerly called. 

Here I am aware I shall oppose a very preva- 
lent opinion among the plain old fashioned people 
of our community. They tell us our ancestors 



BEANS AND PEAS. 167 

lived much on bean porridge, and yet were re- 
markably healthy ; and they seem to sigh for a 
return to their primitive habits. Now that bean 
porridge is quite as wholesome as many of the 
mixed and high-seasoned dishes, usually found 
upon our modern tables, I will not pretend to deny ; 
but that any hquid food can ever be as wholesome, 
to the healthy, as the same amount of nutriment 
when in a solid form, is to my mind most evident. 
Had our ancestors, along with the rest of their 
good habits, lived on bread and milk instead of 
bean porridge, we, their offspring, at least most 
of us, should have enjoyed far better constitutions 
of mind and body, than we now do. 

I have often smiled to hear people complain 
of the degeneracy of modern times, and especially 
of the feeble constitutions of both males and 
females, particularly the latter — and yet in the 
next breath laud some of those very habits of our 
ancestors, which I have no doubt have had a pow- 
erful influence in producing the very degeneracy 
complained of. 

But I must still insist on the usefulness of peas 
and beans themselves, when properly baked or 
boiled, notwithstanding the fashionable fears. They 
are not to be eaten at every meal, it is true, 
but only as an occasional breakfast or dinner ; say 
two, or three, or four times a week. In this way, 



168 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

they are useful, and more than useful ; they seem 
to me almost indispensable. /Alluding to this 
subject, Dr. Paris observes — ■' It has been said 
with some truth, that nature would seem to point 
out the necessity of mixing such food with other 
grains, for the soil becomes exhausted unless it is 
alternately sown with grains and pulses ; whereas, 
by such an alternation, the ground is preserved in 
a condition to afford a constant supply of nutri- 
ment." Every intelligent agriculturalist knows 
the correctness of the principle to which Dr. P. 
refers ; and he who has reflected on the subject, 
will be apt to derive from it, as he does, a strong 
argument in favor of variety in human diet— -not, 
indeed, at the same meal, but at different ones. It 
is at least a strong analogy. 



CHAPTER XV. 



BUCKWHEAT AND MILLET. 

Buckwheat pancakes. In Germany, used for bread, pud 
dings, &c. Hulled buckwheat. Anecdote of Peter the 
Great. Buckwheat bread in Boston. Millet. 

There is a wide difference of opinion among 
intelligent farmers in regard to the nutritive qualities 
of buckwheat. Some affirm that it is worth almost 
as much for swine and some other animals, as 
wheat or corn, while others appear to regard it as 
nearly worthless. The truth is probably some- 
where between the two extremes. 

Buckwheat pancakes, sometimes called slap- 
jacks or flap-jacks, were formerly much used 
throughout the eastern and middle United States. 
They were in special demand during the winter ; 
and are, in many places, very fashionable still. 
They are a very inferior kind of food, but are most 
wholesome when eaten alone and nearly cold, or 
with a very little milk ; whereas, they are com 
monly used hot, and with molasses ; or, what is a 
thousand times worse, covered with melted butter. 



170 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

It is quite common also, to allow children to dip 
pieces of these cakes in the gravy of meat, espe- 
cially fresh meat, fried. In this way, they are 
quite as bad as when deluged with butter. 

Few, I trust, will use buckwheat in any form, 
in a country where there is a rich abundance 
of wheat, rye and corn. The better way, for the 
most part, is to leave it to oxen, swine, poultry, 
birds, squirrels and mice, to whom of right it belongs. 
Peter the Great, however, claimed a right to the 
use of it. He is said to have eaten it boiled, with 
butter on it ; but we are not told how the hulls 
were disengaged. Hulled buckweat could not be 
very bad food. 

I am told that some families in this city have 
acquired the art of forming buckwheat flour into 
loaves of tolerable bread — tolerable, I mean, so far 
as the taste is concerned. Still — I repeat it — it is 
a heavy, pasty substance, and not very wholesome. 

Millet. — This is much used in eastern coun- 
tries, as food for horses and cattle, and to fatten 
poultry. It is also sometimes used by the peasants 
of Europe for bread. It is, however, more fashion- 
able to make it into puddings ; and some prefer it 
in this way to rice. In America, or at least in New 
England, it would be hardly worth cultivating. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE BEET, CARROT AND PARSNIP. 

Richness of the beet. Boiling, steaming, baliing and roast- 
ing it. Pickled beets. Medicinal properties. Nature of 
the carrot. Fit only for strong, healthy stomachs. Sea- 
soning it. Does it prevent intestinal worms ? Medicinal 
effects. The parsnip. How kept. Should it be eaten 
young .'' 

The beet, next to the potatoe, is the most nutri- 
tive esculent root which comes to our tables. It is 
not only nutritious, but, if properly prepared, easy 
of digestion. Its agreeable flavor, moreover, ren- 
ders it generally acceptable. It contains a very 
large quantity of sugar,* but not much farina or 
meal. 

The best ways of cooking the beet are boiling, 
steaming, baking and roasting. Boiling is the most 
common mode. The time requisite to boil the 
beet well, is said to be about an hour and a half. 

* Of some kinds of beet, fourteen pounds are said to pro- 
duce a pound of sugar. Great efforts are now making, in 
many parts of our country, to introduce this species of 
manufacture among us. 



172 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

There are many fine varieties of the beet ; but 
the deep red beet, of a size rather large, is thought 
by many to be the richest and best. 

Willich says that some less flatulent root, such as 
parsley, celery, or even potatoes, ought to be used 
with the beet ; but, if eaten slowly and in moderate 
quantity only, it does not often prove flatulent to 
healthy people. The last mentioned writer recom- 
mends it for supper, to which I am decidedly 
opposed. None of the esculent roots ought to be 
used at supper, not even the potatoe. No wonder 
there is so much flatulence in a world where, after 
a long day of bodily and mental fatigue and ex- 
haustion, people are allowed to eat things for 
supper which require the strongest efforts of the 
digestive powers. 

The pickled beet is quite a favorite among us, 
but it ought never to be eaten. It is also said, 
that the beet is sometimes stewed with the onion, 
but that if eaten in great quantity, in this way, is 
injurious to the stomach. The fried beet is still 
more injurious. I ought to say, in closing my 
remarks on the beet, that its mild laxative pro- 
perties render it most happily adapted — if care is 
used about the quantity — to regulate the habits 
of those who are inclined to costiveness. Were 
mankind duly enlightened in physiology and hy- 
giene, we should find less dependence on medicine 



173 

than we now do. A proper attention to food, 
drink, air and exercise, would equally prevent such 
a necessity. 

The Carrot. — This, in many respects, resem- 
bles the beet, but is more difficult of digestion. 
Like the beet, it contains a large proportion of 
sugar, and is very nutritious. It is best when 
boiled, steamed or roasted. 

The carrot, like other esculent roots — the pota- 
toe itself not excepted — must be used in small 
quantity by those whose stomachs are not firm and 
strong. And if such persons attempt to make a 
whole meal of it, salt should be added, and perhaps 
spice. To the strong and vigorous, the spice 
would be injurious ; and I would advise others to 
do with the article when spiced, as some one ad- 
vises his readers to do with cucumbers, after having 
prepared them in fine sty]e-^throw them away. 

It is said by some writers, that this esculent has 
the property of destroying, or at least preventing 
the development and growth of intestinal worms. 
This opinion may or may not be well founded. 
Whatever gives permanent tone and strength to 
the stomach and bowels, and through them to the 
whole system, has a tendency to destroy or pre- 
vent, the formation of worms ; but whatever, on 
the contrary, weakens the system, favors their 



174 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

development and growth. The carrot is, at all 
events, slightly laxative. 

The Parsnip. — This, also, is quite as nutritive 
as the beet and the carrot, and somewhat less 
flatulent than either ; and is easily digested. I am 
not fond of it, nor of the carrot ; on account of 
its sweetness. If properly boiled, however, and 
eaten as an occasional meal, when the stomach is 
in full strength, it cannot be objectionable. Pars- 
nips should be kept in the cellar ; and should be 
excluded from the air by being covered with sand. 

These three roots — the beet, the carrot and the 
parsnip — are said by many dietetic writers to be 
best while young. 1 do not know how this is ; 
though I can easily conceive, that in these circum- 
stances, they may be more easily digested as well 
as more nutritious ; but it does not thence follow 
that they are more wholesome. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE TURNIP. 

Character of the turnip. Use made of it by the Romans. 
Mashing it. 

Turnips are less nutritive than most other escu 
lent roots ; but if well boiled or roasted, they 
cannot be a bad article of diet, for occasional use. 
They are too innutritious to be used long without 
bread, or some other solid and more substantial 
aliment. They are somewhat deceptive in their 
effects on the stomaph ; for though they sit easy, 
they have too little nutriment to form a very rich 
or nutritious chyle ; and hence, perhaps, it is, that 
physicians have been divided in sentiment respect- 
ing their wholesomeness. There is, however, a 
great difference in the quality of turnips. Some 
are much richer and of a more uncloying sweet 
than others. They are slightly laxative ; which 
renders it necessary to avoid using them at too 
many successive meals. 

The ancient Romans, in the best period of their 
republic — so Dr. Paris says — lived much upon the 



176 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

turnip ; and I have known several healthy old men 
who made it a principal article of their diet. It 
cannot, therefore, be as inefficient, as many persons 
suppose. 

It is quite customary to mash the turnip, before 
it is eaten ; and to mix it with mashed potatoe, 
and to add butter, salt and pepper ; and sometimes 
sauce or gravy besides. Now this is quite incor- 
rect. It should never be mashed except in the 
mouth ; and if this were even admissible, it should 
not be peppered, or above all, buttered ; nor should 
it be mixed with other substances. 

When will people learn to avoid this artificial 
mashing of their food ? Multitudes seem to think 
they cannot eat so much as a potatoe, until it is 
mashed and something is added to it. Their 
beans and their rice even, must be mashed and 
reduced as much as possible to a soft slippery 
mass, that will elude the teeth and tongue, and the 
salivary action. Whereas, nothing ought to be 
mashed before it is eaten, which can as well be 
eaten otherwise. This is a universal rule — almost 
as much so as that two and two make four. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE ONION AND RADISH. 

Dr. Paris's opinion. Modes of cooking the onion. How to 
preserve it. Radishes. Objections to their use. 

Great use is made of the onion in the United 
States ; but I do not regard it as a very valuable 
esculent, except for medicinal purposes. It is 
somewhat stimulant and heating, as well as diu- 
retic. Dr. Paris says it certainly contains a 
considerable proportion of nourishment ; but his 
manner of expressing his opinion appears to me, 
to imply doubts of the truth of his own statements. 
He relates, moreover, from Sir John Sinclair, that 
a Scotch Highlander, with a few raw onions in his 
pocket, and a crust of bread or some oat cake, can 
travel to an almost incredible extent, for two or 
three days in succession, without any other food. 
This is not very strange, however. Who could 
not travel, with crusts of good bread in his 
pocket, if in sufficient quantity ? There is no 
better food in the world for a person who is to 
travel violently a few days, than this ; but I 
12 



178 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

have yet to learn that the raw onions would add 
much to the amount of real sustenance. They 
might serve as a condiment. 

Since, however, the onion is much in fashion, it 
may be well to say that the, best method of cook- 
ing it is either by boiling or roasting ; and the 
worst by frying. The fried onion, either alone or 
with apples, potatoes or meat, is exceedingly indi- 
gestible and unwholesome ; and to any but a 
perverted taste, highly offensive and disgusting. As 
• a medicine, it is sometimes very properly used raw. 

Onions should be kept very dry ; and the more 
they are kept in the open air, provided they do 
not freeze, the better. At all events, they should 
never be kept in a cellar after March. It is said 
that boiling onions in milk and water, greatly 
diminishes their strong taste. 

Garlics and chives belong to the same general 
family of eatables with the onion, and require the 
same general remarks. The chives, however, are 
greatly inferior both to the garlic and the onion. 

The Radish. — Radishes, though often eaten, 
are miserable things ; not so much because they 
contain but little nutriment, as because they are too 
acrid and stimulant, and withal, very indigestible, 
especially when old. They produce much flatu- 
lence, also, unless in the very strongest stomachs. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



THE SQUASH, PUMPKIN AND TOMATO. 

The squash. Boiled. Made into pies. The pumpkin. 
Pies. The tomato. 

The squash is usually eaten in an unripe state. 
It is roasted, boiled or baked. Boiling is the most 
common mode of cooking it. There are few 
persons who are fond of it, however, in its simple 
state ; and hence few are fond of it at all. They 
are more fond of the butter and other seasoning 
applied to it. Some of the better sorts of squashes 
are permitted to get nearly ripe before they are 
gathered ; and a few varieties will keep with care 
till winter. The squash simply boiled, when ripe, 
and pies with an under crust, made of coarse meal, 
or even without crust, are by no means among the 
worst kinds of food. 

The squash should never be kept in the cellar, 
unless to prevent freezing. Dampness greatly in- 
jures it. It requires a dry warm room to keep well. 

The pumpkin is seldom if ever used till quite 
ripe, which renders it better food than the squash* 



180 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Some of the new settlers of the western states, 
when they first locate themselves on the soil, are 
said very frequently to alternate their corn bread 
and cakes with roasted pumpkins ; and they deem 
them wholesome. Plain sauce from them, when 
boiled or baked; is almost equally common. But 
pumpkin pies are, in almost all parts of New 
England, as well as other regions of the United 
States, regarded as quite a luxury. The common 
method of making the crust renders them objec- 
tionable ; but if, as was proposed in regard to the 
squash, in the last paragraph, the crust were made 
more simple, an objection would remain, which is, 
that this species of food does not require mastica- 
tion enough. Nor is it, after all, very nutritious. 

The Tomato. — Of the tomato or love apple, 
I know very little. It is chiefly employed as a 
sauce or condiment. No one, it is believed, 
regards it as very nutritious ; and it belongs, like 
the mushroom and the potatoe, to a family of 
plants, some of the individuals of which are 
extremely poisonous. Some persons are even 
injured, more or less, by the acid of the tomato. 
Dr. Dunglison says it is wholesome and valuable ; 
but a very slight acquaintance leads me to a differ- 
ent opinion. 



CHAPTER XX. 



CABBAGE, LETTUCE, GREENS, &(y. 

Cabbage of little value. How best adapted to use. Boiled. 
Raw. Sour crout. Eaten with ham and chesnuts. Let- 
tuce. Anecdote of Galen. Greens and celery. 

The chief claim of the cabbage to our attention 
is founded on the fact, that it is one of the com- 
paratively few things that can be preserved during 
the winter. And yet it is far inferior to the pota- 
toe, the beet, the carrot, the parsnip, the apple, 
the pear, and even the onion. Still, as many 
will eat it, if they like it, in defiance of conse- 
quences, it may be well to say a few words 
respecting it. 

For those whose stomachs have preserved their 
original integrity, or who having once lost it have 
since regained it, cabbage is best when boiled, 
with a little salt. It needs to boil about an hour. 
The addition of vinegar, after it is boiled, renders 
it more quickly digestible, but the vinegar injures 
the stomach more than the cabbage would by 
digesting a little more slowly ; and therefore I 



182 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

cannot advise its use. For the stomach, as it is 
usually trained, and as we find it almost every- 
where in life, weak and inefficient, and unable 
to work without the application of " whips and 
spurs," I suppose that raw cabbage, sliced fine 
and eaten with pepper, salt and yinegar, is the 
most useful form of this vegetable ; and next to 
this, the German sour crout. 

I do not say that this sour crout is the most 
palatable preparation of the cabbage for the 
table, except to those who have been trained to it 
fi'om infancy ; but only that it is digestible, nutri- 
tious, and little injurious to the powers of the 
stomach. This is one of the dishes which Capt. 
Cook made use of among his sailors, in his long 
voyages round the world ; and I have no doubt it 
had, on them, in these circumstances, a most 
happy medicinal effect. No one will, for one 
moment, however, be likely to suppose that the 
cabbage was ^as useful as many other vegetables 
would have been, could they have been preserved 
in an equally healthful and perfect state. 

Willich says of the red cabbage, by which I 
suppose he must mean the purple, that as the 
French and Germans eat it, that is with ham and 
chesnuts, it is indigestible, heating, flatulent and 
laxative, and contains no nourishment. That the 
ham would be indigestible there can be no doubt ; 



183 

and it would' probably require stronger stomachs 
than most we meet with now-a-days, to digest a 
combination of ham, cabbage and chesnuts. 

. Lettuce, &c. — ^Lettuce^ greens and celery, 
though much eaten, are worse than cabbage, being 
equally indigestible without the addition of con- 
diments. Besides, the lettuce contains narcotic 
properties. It is said of Galen, that he used to 
obtain from a head of it, eaten on going to bed, 
all the good effects of a dose of opium. For 
condiments, when eaten, oil and the yolk of eggs 
have been often added to it ; but some prefer a 
mixture of salt, vinegar, and sugar or molasses. 
It is at best hard of digestion, and contains very 
little nutriment ; and if eaten at all, should be eaten 
in the morning, or when the stomach is strongest. 

All these crude substances seem to me uncalled 
for, and unnecessary. Why should the healthy 
stomach be filled with such trash, when it would 
relish and even prefer that which is, to say the 
least, less doubtful ? For variety's sake, will it be 
replied ? But we have variety enough without it. 
Besides, few people will eat such things without 
vinegar, oil, pepper; or some other objectionable 
substance added to them. 

One person, in conversation with me on this 
subject, said that he believed greens could not be 



184 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

unwholesome, for he knew a man who was in 
the constant habit of using them every spring, 
for several years, and yet remained remarkably 
healthy. " But," said I, " did not the same 
person eat bacon daily, during all this time ? " 
" Most certainly," he replied. " And which do 
you think is worst, bacon or greens ? " " Bacon, 
by far." " But do you think that the fact, that 
he ate bacon without immediate suffering, proves 
that too to be harmless ? " " Oh no, by no means." 
" Then why do you make such a conclusion, in 
regard to greens ? " 

As to the gourd, it is not much used, in this 
country, as food ; but its pulp is a favorite dish 
among the lower classes of people in Arabia and 
Egypt. They boil it, or make it into a sort of 
pudding, by filling the shell with rice and meat. 

One word, in this place, respecting asparagas. 
The young shoots of this plant, boiled, are the 
most unexceptionable form of greens with which I 
am acquainted. They approach, in their nature, 
to green or half grown peas, and are probably 
about as wholesome. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



ARROW-ROOT, TAPIOCA, SAGO, &c. 

Nutritive properties of arrow-root. Made into jelly. Eaten 
with rice. Sago. Mushrooms. 

Arrow-root is one of the most nutritious vege- 
table substances in the world. Salep, sago and 
tapioca, and even the starch of the potatoe, have 
a very strong resemblance to it in their properties, 
but are none of them quite so purely nutritious. 

As a sort of substitute for other forms of food, 
especially in bowel complaints, the jelly formed 
from these substances is exceedingly valuable. 
Arrow-root is not only valuable by itself, but is 
often very useful mixed with rice. I have seen 
these two substances, in various proportions, admin- 
istered to the sick and the feeble, with great evi- 
dent advantage, especially where there was much 
unnatural heat or febrile action. For the consump- 
tive, sago appears to be more particularly adapted 
than either of the others. 

None of these substances, notwithstanding the 
great amount of nutriment they contain, are so 



186 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

digestible as is generally supposed. We are pro- 
bably deceived, by their quiet, unstimulating char- 
acter. This comparative quiet we mistake for 
agreement ; but this is not the end of the matter. 

1 have sometimes wondered how sago, and 
arrow-root, and tapioca jellies and puddings came 
to be so popular, even at fashionable tables, as we 
often find them. But the fact is, that they are 
precisely that sort of substances which admit and 
even demand, a great many additions, as milk, 
sugar, sauces and condiments ; and they require 
but little mastication. These, though objectionable 
in point of health, are, to the fashionable, high 
qualifications. Yet the only condiment which is 
at all compatible with health, in this case, seems 
to me to be milk or cream. To the perfect 
stomach they are, like nearly all other substances, 
the most wholesome alone, taken as an occasional 
breakfast or supper. Still, they do very well con- 
joined with bread, or even with mealy potatoes. 

The Mushroom. — Strange that mankind should 
ever have used the mushroom. All the various 
species of this substance are of a leathery con- 
sistence, and contain but little nutriment. The 
condiments or seasonings which are added are 
what are chiefly prized. Without these, we should 
almost as soon eat saw dust as mushrooms. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



ON FRUITS IN GENERAL. 

Second grand division of aliments. Principles interspersed. 
Apology for the order and arrangement. 

The second grand division of human aliments 
is fruits. These, with some exceptions, I have 
endeavored to place, like the farinacea, in what 
appears to me to be the order of their value. 

I have also interspersed with my remarks on 
almost every article, but especially in the chapters 
on apples and pears, much collateral and general 
information. I have done this for two reasons — 
first, because the thoughts seemed naturally to 
arise, while treating of these subjects, and as I 
supposed might naturally arise in the same connec- 
tion in the minds of many of my readers ; and 
secondly, because I was willing, by extending a little 
some of the principal chapters on fruit, to inculcate 
or at least suggest the idea of their great importance. 
Fruits, as a real and essential part of human diet, 
at our daily meals, have, for the most part, been 
strangely and unaccountably overlooked. 



188 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

There is a prejudice among us against foreign 
medicines ; but in order to be consistent, we ought 
to extend our prejudice to foreign drinks and 
aliments. There may be, and undoubtedly is, 
some general truth in the doctrines upon which this 
prejudice is founded ; nevertheless, as I conceive, 
they are carried too far. Were our foreign imported 
aliments perfect in their kinds — fruits among the 
rest — I should have less objection to their use than 
I now have. But it does seem to me very unrea- 
sonable to use imperfect, unripe, dried or half- 
decayed substances, merely because they came 
across the water, in preference to our equally rich 
and more perfect domestic productions. 

The fruits which have been made the subjects 
of remark in the progress of the following chap- 
ters, are principally the following : — The apple, 
pear, peach, apricot, nectarine, strawberry, rasp- 
berry, blackberry, whortleberry, gooseberry, cur- 
rant, cherry, plum, melon, fig and raisin. To 
these are added, for the sake of convenience, 
the chesnut, walnut, hazlenut, peanut, he. The 
chesnut most properly belongs in the same general 
division with peas and beans. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



THE APPLE. 

The apple one of the Creator's noblest gifts. Varieties of 
this' fruit. Little used for food. The apple very nutri- 
tious. Sweet apples. Rules for selecting the apple. 
Raw apples best. Baked apples. Why apples sometimes 
" disagree." Five rules for learning to use apples as food. 
Apples for breakfast. Accompaniments. Boiling apples. 
Apple sauce. Danger of putting it in home-made earthen 
vessels. Stewing apples. Baking and roasting. Baked 
apples and milk. Apple dumplings. Puddings. Bird's 
nest puddings. Fried apples. Preserves. Mince pies. 
Improved mince pies. Other preparations of apples. 
Apple bread. All apples should be perfect. Never cook 
green apples. 

The apple is one of the noblest gifts of the 
Creator to man. It may be raised, in a tolerable 
degree of perfection, in almost every country of 
the temperate zone ; and to some extent, in the 
torrid. 

One society in Europe has twelve hundred 
varieties of this fruit ; and in a single garden at 
Flushing, Long Island, may be found four hundred 
and thirty. 



190 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

The apple has hitherto been but httle used for 
food. It has, indeed, been mixed with meat to 
form a very unwholesome compound, well known 
by the name of mince pie ; and it is sometimes 
used to form pies by itself. But the most familiar 
and frequent use of it at the table, in the interior 
of New England, is in the form of what is usually 
called apple sauce — the more common method 
of preparing which consists in boiling the apples 
in sweet or unfermented cider. In general, how- 
ever, as I have already said, the apple has been 
used comparatively little at meals. 

I do not know what are the respective propor- 
tions of nutritious and innutritious matter contained 
in the apple. These doubtless vary greatly, ac- 
cording to the quality. From the great amount 
of saccharine substance contained in the sweet 
apple, and from experiments recently made on its 
use among domestic animals, not a doubt can 
remain that it is sufficiently nutritious to be received 
at our tables, and to hold a more conspicuous place 
there than has usually been allotted to it. 

I have known many families of children who, 
during the latter part of summer and the early 
part of autumn, lived almost wholly upon apples, 
and yet seemed well nourished and healthy. I 
think I have observed, however, that such children 
incline a little more to verminous diseases than 



THE APPLE. 191 

Other children, as well as to bowel complaints and 
corpulence. This is probably because they eat 
them between their meals, use them in too large a 
quantity, and do not make a proper selection. 
They eat much of this sort of fmit which is unripe 
or imperfect. 

Indeed, most kinds of tlie apple, as it is usually 
procured by children, are of an inferior quality. 
Very little pains has been taken among the mass 
of our farmers to cultivate the best kinds. They 
have been raised, after all, chiefly for cider ; and 
the notion that small, sour, knotty apples make 
the best cider, has been so extensively prevalent, 
along with a want of enterprise or any hearty 
desire for improvement, as to prevent the intro- 
duction, to any considerable extent, of such noble 
fruit as the New York, Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey pippins, and the New England pearmains, 
greenings, seek-no-furthers, gilliflowers and russets. 

Sweet apples are probably more nutritious than 
sour ones, although the fact that the latter make 
nearly or quite as much cider as the former, would 
seem to prove that even these are sufficiently nutri- 
tious for all the purposes of health. Few persons 
reject the turnip, the cabbage, or the tops of the 
asparagas, on account of any supposed deficiency 
of nutritious matter ; and yet I cannot resist the 
belief, that good, ripe, mealy sour apples, not too 



192 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

sour, are far more nutritious ; and that good sweet 
apples are even as nutritious as the beet or the 
carrot, if not as much so as the potatoe. 

There is a very great difference in the quality 
of apples. Some are much coarser grained than 
others. Some are more dry. Some have thicker 
and tougher skins. Some have their juices and 
pulp better developed in particular soils or in dry 
seasons, than in others. There are a few general 
rules which will probably assist us in the selection 
of this important article of food. 

1. The larger and more perfect apples on a tree 
are usually the best. Not that apples naturally 
small are not sometimes as good as those naturally 
large ; for I am not here speaking of a selection 
from different trees, but from the same tree. 

2. Apples from a given tree or stock are, as a 
general rule, more perfect in their juices, more 
wholesome, and probably more nutritious, in pro- 
portion as their color is deep or intense. Thus, 
if the color is green, the more intense the color 
the better. If light red, the fruit is more perfect 
in proportion to the brightness of the red. If 
yellow, its excellence is in proportion to the depth 
or intensity of that yellow. Any one may satisfy 
himself of the truth of this remark, by a little 
observation. The remark may even be extended 
to different trees. Thus, of the fruit of two trees, 



THE APPLE. 193 

both bearing dark green apples, that will usually 
be the best whose color is most intense or perfect, 
and that the worst whose color is most faint or 
pale. The apple has a degree of life — a kind 
of vital force or power ; — and this vital force is in 
proportion to the perfection of its qualities. 

3. The more mealy the pulp of an apple, pro- 
vided it is not tasteless, the more digestible. I 
know it is thought otherwise by most writers. 
They tell us that both apples and pears are best 
when they are most melting or juicy. They may 
be more nutritious, without being any more diges- 
tible ; and hence, probably, the mistake. I am 
confident that the most juicy apples — sweet or 
sour — are far from being most easy or most rapid 
of digestion. 

4. The perfection of an apple is somewhat in 
proportion to the fineness and the firmness of its 
pulp. A loose, spongy or stringy pulp is not 
only less digestible, but less wholesome and nutri- 
tious than one which is the contrary. 

5. Apples with a thin skin, other things being 
equal, are richer and better than those which have 
thicker and tougher skins. 

6. They should be eaten, as much as possible, 
in their most perfect or most ripe state. 

7. To preserve the apple in the most perfect 
state, it should be kept in a pure and dry air. It 

13 



194 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

IS not by any means uncommon, to put apples in 
a damp place ; or in large piles, where they seem 
to gather and retain moisture. They are always 
injured by this treatment, even though they should 
not go so far, at once, as to begin to decay. 

The apple- is most conducive to health when 
eaten in its raw or natural state ; not merely 
because in its natural state — -the state in which the 
Author of nature has prepared it, though even this 
deserves our attention — but because in this way 
it requires and receives more perfect mastication. 
If the skin is very hard or firm, possessing a sharp- 
ness which the digestive powers cannot readily 
overcome, it may be removed. The paring should 
be thin, however, as the best of the apple is 
believed to be nearest the skin. 

Baking or roasting renders most apples some- 
what sweeter than they would otherwise be ; but 
it may justly be questioned whether the process at 
all improves them — to say nothing of its lessening 
the demand upon the teeth and salivary glands. 
To say they are unwholesome in this stale, abso- 
lutely so, would indeed be wrong ; but to say that 
for those who are in perfect health, they are 
usually more wholesome in their natural state, than 
when cooked, is quite correct. It can hardly be 
denied, that they are often mor6 nutritious when 
cooked ; but one of the advantages of fruits is, 



THE APPLE. 195 

that they furnish to the stomach a supply of innu- 
tritious substance. 

We are often told by adults — seldom if ever by 
children — that raw. apples do not agree with them. 
If this circumstance proves anything against their 
use, it proves too much. There is hardly an 
article of diet, however wholesome in its nature, 
which has not been found to disagree with some 
individual or other. Milk, rice, beans, corn, pota- 
toes, corn bread, and almost every sort of bread, 
and even cold water, cannot be borne by some 
individuals ; so they tell us. Will any one pre- 
tend that thev ought not therefore to be used ? 

No doubt raw apples lie heavy on the stomachs 
of some persons. For though the experiments 
of Dr. Beaumont and all other experiments of the 
kind, go to show that the ripe mellow apple, espe- 
cially the sweet apple, is exceedingly quick and 
easy of digestion, when used in a proper manner, 
there are numerous circumstances of civic life 
which may render it the contrary of all this. 

1. Apples may lie heavy on a person's stomach 
if he eats too many at once, especially when he 
has long been unaccustomed to their use. Such a 
person should not begin with using a dozen or 
two at a time. I would begin with half or one 
third of an apple of moderate size ; or even less, 
if this should not sit well. The quantity, when 



196 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

we have not taken too much at once in the outset, 
may be afterwards slowly increased. 

2. They may not sit well, if they are only half 
masticated. Some persons never think of making 
it a principle to masticate an apple as thoroughly 
as possible. This is not to be wondered at, in a 
world where it seems to be the grand aim of every- 
body to masticate their food as little as possible. 
But though not to be wondered at, it is to be 
regretted ; for there is hardly anything which is 
rendered slow and difficult- of digestion by being 
swallowed whole, in as great a degree as apples. 
They ought to be reduced to as fine a pulp as 
possible. 

3. Apples will he heavy — more readily, perhaps, 
than some other things which could be named — 
when eaten after we have already taken a full 
meal. Too much of the simplest and most diges- 
tible food is always an evil, but when to enough 
and more than enough of something else, you add 
a quantity of apples, and especially when only 
half masticated, it is no wonder they do not agree. 

4. Apples sometimes disagree when eaten be- 
tween meals. If the stomach is ever so strong, it 
will need rest when it has got through with the 
work of digesting a meal. But if we go and eat 
apples about the time the digestion is completed, 
and thus, instead of permitting the stomach to rest. 



THE APPLE. 197 

however fatigued it may be, set it to work again, 
we can scarcely expect it to do its work well. 
Nor can we reasonably wonder or complain, if it 
should refuse to work at all, and the new substance 
should be to it, for some time, as a dead weight or 
foreign substance. 

5. The same lying heavy on the stomach will 
often happen in consequence of eating fruit at a 
wrong time of day, especially if a person is not 
very robust. Thus the feeble will sometimes bear 
apples, if they begin with a small quantity and 
masticate them well, in the morning, when they 
cannot be made to sit well at evening. They 
should be eaten by the feeble at their meals, and 
when their digestive powers appear to be strongest. 
With most, this is at breakfast ; but with some, 
perhaps, at dinner. 

There are very few persons in the world on 
whose stomachs apples appear to he heavy, who 
could not gradually bring themselves to use them 
with impunity, by observing the cautions which I 
have mentioned. 

To the individual of perfect appetite — though I 
do not yet know where such an individual can be 
found — the best way probably is to make a break- 
fast — now and then — of apples alone. He must, 
however, get rid of the fashionable idea that they are 
not hearty enough ; and that they will not give him 



198 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Strength. No healthy man will suffer for want 
of strength to labor, simply because he ate nothing 
for breakfast but apples. They are fully as nutri- 
tious as turnips, onions, asparagus, carrots and 
beets ; and sweet ones probably much more so j 
perhaps as much so as potatoes. 

He must, however, have full faith in them. He 
who only half believes his breakfast will sustain 
his strength, will be very likely to imagine a faUing 
off at eleven, just as the dram-drinker does, for 
want of his dram ; but he who does not expect 
anything of the kind, will rarely experience it ; — 
so powerful is the influence of mind over body. 

For those, however, who in consequence of their 
erroneous habits, early formed, cannot or think 
they cannot receive these doctrines, or who would 
feel that they were doing penance to confine them- 
selves to a breakfast of even the best sweet apples, 
I will give some further general directions. 

Where apples are made a part only of our 
meals, they should be conjoined with such things 
as most resemble them in their tendency. I know 
this is not the general belief. An entirely different 
view is frequently taken. The principle is almost 
universal, that contraries should be eaten to coun- 
teract unfavorable tendencies. Vegetables, for 
example, must be set off against meat, and meat 
against vegetables ; and fruits which are juicy and 



THE APPLE. 199 

pulpy should be conjoined, it is thought, with dry 
bread or some substance not unlike it. Again, 
sauces and preserves inust be taken, it is thought, 
with meat. 

The objection to this prevalent belief is founded 
on the great leading principle, that each meal 
shoulJ be as little complicated as possible. If 
sweet apples are to form a part of a meal, instead 
of tising dry flour bread with them, I should prefer 
sweet potatoes, pumpkins, beets, caiTots, or even 
common potatoes. Contraries I would withhold 
till the next meal ; though I would be careful to 
use them then. 

It is no wide departure, however, from physio- 
logical truth to eat the apple in small quantity, 
either at breakfast or dinner, with any article we 
choose, which is wholesome. I have stated the 
abstract truth, and happy is he who can live up to 
it ; but let us not complain of him who cannot, or 
who thinks he cannot. Let him, also, who cannot 
use the stronger food, be allowed for a time to use 
that which is weaker ; provided, however, that he 
comes up at all times, to his own convictions of 
duty — his own standard of right and wrong — his 
own conscience. 

Much has been said by dietetic writers on the 
importance of boiling apples, pears and other 
fruits. They say it expels the wind. Now I 



200 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

doubt whether the wind in an apple would ever 
give us any trouble, if the stomach was in a good 
and sound state. If boilinsf the stomach would 
give it tone, it might be well to boil that ; but if it 
has not tonic power enough to digest a good raw 
apple at breakfast time, properly masticated, it is 
high time it were trained to do so ; and eating 
boiled apples would probably weaken it rather 
than strengthen it. 

The truth is, that such stomachs as cannot digest 
simple things have already been humored too long ; 
they want solid things. We must begin of course 
with small quantities at a time. He alone who 
can eat a raw apple, is fit to eat a boiled one. To 
him-who can eat raw fruit, however, that which is 
boiled is pretty near the pliysiological truth ; and 
in this view I commend its use. I have already 
alluded to apple sauce made by boiHng down the 
apples in sweet, unfermented cider. This, next to 
boiling, is one of the best modes of cooking the 
apple ; and seems to be so common among us, that 
it would be almost useless to declaim against it, 
were it not so. 

I must here insert a caution to all housewives, 
who make apple sauce, pear sauce, quince sauce, 
or any other sauce or article of food which con- 
tains an acid, or in which an acid of any kind can 
possibly be developed by any change to which it 



THE APPLE. 201 

may be exposed by standing, not to put it in the 
common red earthen vessels. The reason is, that 
these vessels are glazed with an oxyde of lead 
which is readily dissolved by vegetable acids, 
forming a poisonous compound. If the acid hap- 
pens to be the acetic acid — the same with that 
of vinegar — the substance formed is the acetate 
of lead, or sugar of lead — as poisonous almost as 
ratsbane. If it is some other acid that is formed, 
still the result is a poison. Many house-keepers 
have observed that the glazing comes off; but, in 
general, without knowing the reason, or dreaming 
of any danger. The lighter colored stone ware is 
usually glazed with melted salt, which renders its use 
for culinary purposes perfectly safe. On this sub- 
ject, the curious reader may find some important 
facts in the " Library of Health," for July, 1837. 

The red earthen vessels of which 1 have spoken 
are extensively used, and people are as extensively 
poisoned. Few, indeed, die outright ; nor are the 
causes of disease so obvious, in every instance, 
that physicians at once detect them. Besides, 
where these causes alone produce disease once, 
they probably fall in with and aggravate other 
diseases produced by other causes, a hundred or 
five hundred times. 

There can be no doubt that Jiundreds of lives 
are lost every year among us by errors in cooking. 



202 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

and in preparing food, drink, medicine, Sic. But for 
one who dies, hundreds, if not thousands, are more 
or less injured ; some of them for their whole lives. 

Next, in point of usefulness and safety to the 
plain boiling of apples, is the process of stewing. 
They are pared, cut into quarters, and after being 
put into a vessel with a little water, slowly soft- 
ened for the table. This is much better than 
boiling them in cider, but is less economical, 
because it must be repeated oftener ; since apples 
prepared in the former mode, much sooner spoil. 

Next to stewing come the processes of baking 
and roasting. Indeed, I regard these three or four 
processes of cookery as nearly on a par with each 
other. Boiling is the most natural ; stewing is 
next, if they are not made too soft by it ; next, 
baking ; and lastly, roasting. 

There is a very general fondness, in this coun- 
try, for baked apples with milk, especially sweet 
ones. Of all the compounds used as food, this is 
one of the most natural ; and it seems to me, to 
be one of the slightest and least objectionable 
departures from truth which can be named in 
modern cookery. 

Apple dumplings are not very objectionable, 
were it not for the crust ; — I mean when they are 
simple. If spices are added, they become inju- 
rious. The great objection is the crust. This is 



THE APPLE. 203 

usually a flour paste ; nor is the state of things 
much better when the paste is made partly of 
potatoes. Unbolted wheat meal is preferable to 
either. But why should we have the apple dump- 
ling at all ? Few would prepare it, or eat it after 
it was prepared, were it not for the crust, and 
above all, for the butter, the sauce, or the sugar 
added to it ; but all these are objectionable. 

Apple puddings are so nearly of the nature 
of the last mentioned, that it is sufficient barely to 
mention them. There is, however, the bird's nest 
pudding, which is more than injurious, to say 
nothing of the waste of time in its preparation. 

To fried apples, as to all other fried food, I must 
strongly object, and for the same reason : — they are 
thereby rendered exceedingly difficult of digestion. 

Apples preserved in sugar or any other similar 
substance, are still further removed, if possible, 
from a state of nature than in any of the prepara- 
tions yet mentioned, if we except the fried state. 
Drying apples, as it involves so much unnecessary 
labor, is by no means to be encouraged. There is 
no difficulty in preserving raw apples till June or 
July, when new fruits begin to appear, if we take 
the necessary pains ; and though not absolutely 
perfect in the raw state, after they have been so 
long kept, they are nevertheless far better than if 
preserved in any other manner. 



t^m 



204 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Perhaps, after all, the use of apples chopped fine 
and mixed with meat, as in mince pies, is as objec- 
tionable as any. These mince pies, when made 
in the best manner, are bad enough ; but when 
made up not only with lean meat, but with the 
addition of suet, spices, raw and dried fruits, wine, 
brandy, he, and put into the usual forms of pastry, 
they become— as Dr. Paris says of pastry alone — 
an abomination. 

The best and most rational method of making 
mince pie of which I have ever heard, was recently 
communicated to me by a lady of this city. Its 
principal excellency consists in the fact, that while 
it retains all the sensible properties of ordinary 
mince pie, it is comparatively simple, and contains 
not a particle of meat or suet, or a drop of wine 
or spirits ; and the crust is of unbolted wheat meal, 
with no more butter than is just necessary to pre- 
vent its adhering to the platter. It is quite a 
discovery ; and is a most happy substitute for the 
old fashioned mince pie. On this account I have 
inserted in another place a recipe for preparing it. 
Still, it is an article which I do not mean to 
recommend to my readers. There are many other 
better modes of using apples than to use them in 
any such compound, however great may be its 
comparative innocency. 



THE APPLE. 205 

As to pancakes, fritters, cheese, cheese cakes, 
biscuits, trifles, jelly, marmalade and creams, pre- 
pared with apples, they are scarcely worth naming. 

Apple bread is a French preparation, which 
appears to be comparatively unobjectionable, and 
which I would not discourage, as an occasional 
variety for those who have not yet attained to that 
simplicity of taste which is desirable. The mode 
of preparing it will be found in the chapter of 
recipes ; but I think the French mode is suscepti- 
ble of improvement, especially by substituting 
unbolted wheat meal for flour. 

Let me once more remind the reader that all 
apples, however used, should be perfect. Some 
persons begin to use them before they are more 
than half ripe. They stew them, make them into 
sauces, pies, he. ; but not without the addition 
of sugar, molasses, spices and other ingredients. I 
am wholly opposed to the use of green fruits of 
every sort. The juices of all green fruits are very 
different from those of ripe ones. Their acids are 
less wholesome than after they are changed by the 
action of the sun in ripening ; nor does the addi- 
tion of saccharine substances in preparing them, at 
all change their real nature. They are still there ; 
they are only concealed. The oxalic acid is still 
oxalic acid, cook green fruits as you will. No 
culinary process — I repeat it — can be substituted 



206 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

for, or produce the effects of solar action. The 
Creator, in many instances, by means of the sun, 
performs the most perfect cuhnary processes ; and 
nature is often the best kitchen and cook. 

Not only should all fruits be perfectly ripe, but 
they should be perfect in their structure and char- 
acter. Many people, in order to save them, use 
the more perfect parts of those which are partially 
decayed or infested with worms, for pies or sauce ; 
and seem to think that by the addition of season- 
ings they remove, in some good degree, their natu- 
ral evil tendency. Formerly, the worthless part 
of our apples went to form cider ; but now, since 
cider is becoming unfashionable, those people who 
wish to save every particle of their fruit, whether 
wholesome or not, contrive to use it all up in the 
family. I hardly need to repeat, that no imperfect 
fruit is fit for the human or even the brute stomach, 
at least so long as we live in a land of such abun- 
dance, and can, if we will, just as well have that 
which is perfect. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



THE PEAR. 

Quality of pears. Bad ones. Baking and roasting pears 
Cautions in preserving them, i'^orcing maturity. Mealy 
pears. Cultivation of the pear. Stewing. Drying. Peai 
jam. 

In general, what has been said of apples, will 
apply to pears. Next to apples, they are one 
of the best table fruits of our country. They are 
best uncooked. Those are usually preferable which 
have the thinnest skins; and those are most whole- 
some, though they may not be to all at first the 
most agreeable, which are most mealy. Their 
excellence, moreover, seems to be^ in some good 
degree at least, in proportion to their sweetness. 

There are in fashion among us, certain larger, 
coarse grained winter pears, which I wish were 
wholly set aside as injurious. For to say nothing 
of the great waste of soil in occupying it with the 
trees that bear them, it seems to me worse than a 
waste — a perversion — of the powers and energies 
of the human stomach, to fill it with such miserable 



208 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

trash. I know these pears are seldom eaten, how 
long so ever they may be preserved, in an un- 
cooked state. But, as a general rule which is at 
leas^ applicable to the fruits. I do not believe sub- 
stances wholly unfit for the human stomach when 
uncooked, can be made fit for its use by cookery. 
The legitimate province of cookery, rationally pur- 
sued, is, as I shall insist more strongly hereafter, to 
improve substances already wholesome, or to in- 
crease the quantity of their nutriment. Thus 
wheat and corn, for example, even uncooked, are 
quite nutritious ; but cookery, besides securing a 
better mastication, appears to me to improve them ; 
and this is undoubtedly the fact in regard to many 
of the esculent roots, especially the potatoe. 

The time may possibly come, when a cheap 
method will be discovered of preserving, not only 
apples and pears, but many other fruits, free from 
decay, for almost any period desirable. But such 
a time has not yet arrived ; and though apples 
may be preserved, with pains enough, for a long 
time without much injury, it is seldom so with pears. 
And, on the whole, I would not attempt it. Let 
us make the most of them in their season ; and let 
them be preserved as long as they can well be 
without special effort ; but let us do no more. At 
least let us not think of preserving those coarse, 
hard, tough, stringy, unpalatable things which are 



THE PEAR. 209 

sometimes deemed so valuable, simply that we 
may waste our precious hours during the winter, in 
converting them, by the cooking process, and the 
addition of sugar, molasses, and other things, into 
a substance, which, after all, is neither so whole- 
some, nor to an un perverted appetite so palatable, 
as a good raw apple. We are responsible to God 
and posterity for the use of our minutes as well as 
our months ; for our cents as well as our dollars ; 
and have no more right to be selfish or wasteful 
of minutes and cents than of months and dollars. 
If we must or rather will preserve any winter 
pears whatever, let them be of the finer grained 
sort ; not of those which look within more like 
the flesh of a sturgeon, than like anything delicate 
or wholesome. 

Some sorts of pears which are merely hard and 
ill tasted, provided they are not coarse grained and 
stringy, may be rendered very agreeable and com- 
paratively wholesome, simply by baking or roasting 
them, without consuming more time than we should 
dare to account for. 

The cautions which were given against putting 
apple sauce into the common red earthen vessels 
of this country, are equally applicable to cooked 
pears and pear sauce. 

Rules are sometimes given by writers on die- 
tetics for rendering apples, pears and other fruits 
14 



■■■ 



,210 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

prematurely mellow ; but all such rules are, as I 
have already said, worse than useless. Fruits should 
always become perfectly ripe in their own natural 
way. And even those which ripen soonest on the 
trees — a sort of scattering first crop — are often 
imperfect in some way or other. 
Il I have spoken of both the apple and pear 

as being preferable when the pulp is somewhat 
dry and fine, and therefore need not repeat my 
remarks. 

It is much to be wished that more pains were 
taken in New England to cultivate the pear, and 
to select, in cultivating it, the best varieties. If 
equal pains were taken, I believe the pear might 
become nearly as important an article of diet as 
the apple. Not less than two hundred varieties, 
fit for the table, are already known to our horticul- 
turists ; and one British, society has six hundred. 
Of these some are slightly acid, others slightly 
sweet ; and some exceedingly rich and sugary. 
A constant succession of this fruit, as well as of the 
apple, might be had from July to winter. 

There are several methods of stewing pears, 
drying them, &z;c., but they are not worth know- 
ing. Pear jam is of still less consequence. The 
only application of fire to this fruit, which is at all 
tolerable, is in the process of baking, boiling, &c. 



/^ 



CHAPTER XXV. 



THE PEACH, APRICOT AND NECTARINE. 

Stone fruits in general. Nature of the peach. Cooking it. 
Drying. The apricot and nectarine. 

There is a very great variety of opinion abroad 
in regard to the peach ; some affirming that it is 
one of the most digestible and wholesome fruits in 
the world ; others, that it is cold, indigestible and 
unwholesome. 

None of the stone fruits are probably quite as 
wholesome, under any circumstances whatever, 
as the apple and the pear, but are sufficiently 
so, perhaps, to justify their use as an occasional 
meal for those who believe in the importance 
of variety at different meals. They who think we 
should confine ourselves, through life, chiefly to 
one article of food, or even to a very few, should 
not select the peach. Used day after day, it 
appears to me it would soon injure the tone of the 
stomach. The stringy nature of this fruit requires 
strong or at least active powers of digestion ; but 
to persons possessing such powers, an occasional 



212 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

meal of the peach is comparatively wholesome. I 
am not aware, however, that it is ever improved 
by cookery, even by the simple process of baking. 
And as to drying, no one ought, on the principles 
mentioned in speaking of the pear, to think of 
using dried peaches. 

The Apricot and Nectarine. — The apricot 
so much resembles the peach, that the same gen- 
eral train of remark will be alike applicable to 
both. The nectarine, according to Dr. Paris, " is 
liable to disagree with some stomachs ; " but this 
" disagreement " is no test positive of the excel- 
lence of a thing, in a world containing its hundreds 
of millions of morbid or diseased stomachs. 

The peach, the apricot and the nectarine, may 
be used, in the morning, as a simple natural break- 
fast for the healthy, after the stomach has had a 
good night's rest ; but I do not say how long the 
practice might be persisted in with impunity. Ap- 
ples, or pears, or bread, would indeed be better, 
would the person be equally well satisfied with 
them ; but if not — if there is a hankering after 
variety, and a feeling that the peach, &c., are the 
gifts of God, and that to abstain from them and eat 
something else, however excellent, is a sort of self- 
denial — not to say penance — then let them be 
moderately used. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



THE STRAWBERRY. 

Prejudice against fruits — how unreasonable. Fruits a pre- 
ventive of disease. Green fruits injurious. Market fruits 
very imperfect. Cultivating the strawberry. General 
laws of summer fruits. Strawberries for breakfast. Eaten 
alone. Eaten with wine, sugar, milk, &c. Strawberries 
and bread. Used for luncheon. Preventive of gravel 
and other diseases. 

A PREJUDICE against the summer fruits, which 
prevails to some extent in this community, is not 
confined wholly to the more ignorant. As lately 
as the first appearance of the cholera among us, 
not a few distinguished physicians retained more 
or less of this unnatural and ill founded prejudice ; 
and did not hesitate to proscribe the use of all 
summer fruits as dangerous, and sometimes as the 
exciting cause of the cholera. Facts, however, 
did not long bear them out in these views. Multi- 
tudes who lived exclusively on vegetables and 
fruits — especially in New York — wholly escaped 
the disease, while many of their friends who ab- 
stained from fruits and vegetables, and used flesh and 
fish, though living in the same house, fell victims. 



214 THE ¥OUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

These facts served to confirm a doctrine which 
had been advanced long before, and which was 
repeated at this time, but which even wise men 
were slow to admit — that instead of promoting 
disease, the summer fruits, properly used, are most 
happily calculated to prevent it.^ 

During the hot season, exposure to great heat 
and a profuse perspiration, have a debilitating 
effect on the skin, in which the whole lining mem- 
brane of the intestinal canal, by a law of the 
animal economy, is sure to sympathize. The con- 
sequence is, that the functions which are usually 
performed, both in this canal and the parts imme- 
diately adjoining it, are much disturbed, and some- 
times the organs become feverish or inflamed. 
These effects, if the causes I have mentioned con- 
tinue to operate uninterrupted, may result either in 
bowel complaint or fever. Probably no small 
share of our cholera morbuses, diarrhoeas, and 
dysenteries, have their origin in this source. 

Now it happens that just as the summer heats 
begin to be severe, and the lining membrane of the 
stomach and bowels begins to be irritable and 

* The author has maintained this same doctrine in an 
anonymous pamphlet, entitled, " Rational View of the Spas- 
modic Cholera," published by Clapp & Hull, of this city, in 
July, 1832, on the first appearance of the cholera in this 
country. 



THE STRAAVBERRT. 215 

feverish, the summer fruits begin to come on. 
These, if ripe, usually contain a moderate propor- 
tion of some gentle, cooling acid, with sugar, muci- 
lage and water. There is, indeed, a difference in 
them, but they are all, when eaten in proper cir- 
cumstances, exceedingly cooling to the intestinal 
canal. So far are they from inviting disease, that 
they actually have a powerful tendency to repel it. 

But there is no valuable earthly blessing which 
may not be abused. Eaten green, or when we 
have already eaten enough of something else, or 
when we are over heated or over fatigued, or when 
the stomach needs repose, or when they are begin- 
ning to decay, all summer fruits may prove inju- 
rious, and defeat the very object for which the 
Author of nature intended them. And yet these 
are the circumstances under which, after all, most 
of them are received. 

One might think, at first view, that when they 
are abundant, and cheap, and excellent, there 
can be little temptation to use what is inferior in 
quality. And yet such is the eagerness of chil- 
dren for these things, that, unless controlled, they 
are very unwilling to wait for them to ripen, but 
are ready to swallow them as soon as they begin 
to change their color, and sometimes a great deal 
sooner. Nor are children alone in this. Not a 
few older persons, who ought to know and do 



216 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

better, are as little apt to govern themselves in this 
matter as children. 

The evil to which I now refer is not so great, 
however, in the country as in the city. There is 
scarcely a fruit in our market which is not brought 
in long before it is ripe. The folly of purchasing 
such fruit, is enhanced by the consideration, that it 
is not only worse in quality than when ripe, but 
much dearer. And yet, such is our natural eager- 
ness for fruits, how few resist the temptation ! 

Few summer fruits are more easily cultivated 
than the strawberry. I know not how many 
varieties of it there are, but they are numerous ; 
and some of them make their appearance very 
early. They may, however, be so managed as to 
be had in one or another of their varieties, for a 
period of several months. The strawberry is not 
only one of the earliest, but one of the most excel- 
lent fruits — being not only very wholesome, but 
highly delicious. The pulp is light, though but 
little watery ; and it does not very readily undergo 
the acetous fermentation in the stomach. 

It is truly surprising that so few persons, in our 
country, ever think of cultivating the strawberry. 
A few people around cities and towns raise it 
expressly for the market ; and a (ew more, espe- 
cially of the wealthy, cultivate small beds or short 
rows of it — ^rather, however, as an occasional treat 



THE STRAWBEKBY. 217 

to themselves or their friends, than as a regular, 
and important, and indispensable article of daily 
food. The far greater part choose to buy such 
trash as they can get in the market, rather than be 
at the trouble to raise for themselves. 

In the country, however, where the appetite is 
somewhat less perverted than in the city, a more 
extensive use is made of this fruit for a short time, 
but it is seldom cultivated. The wild species is 
chiefly relied on. 

1 repeat it, however, most persons, in city or in 
country, fail to secure to themselves all the benefits 
they might from the use of fruits, were they to 
understand the true philosophy of their nature and 
use, and practice according to their knowledge. 
To know how and when to use this single fruit — 
the strawberry — so as to derive from its use the 
pleasure, the nourishment, and the health for which 
nature intended it, is worth more than the knowl- 
edge of whole chapters in the art of tickling the 
palate with condiments and ingenious mixtures, at 
the certain sacrifice of health and longevity. But 
it happens that the same general rules which apply 
to the strawberry, are applicable, with {ew modifi- 
cations, to other fruits. This will be a sufficient 
apology for introducing, under the present head, a 
few general principles which should govern us in 
the use of all the summer fruits. 



218 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

The black mulberry, says the Encyclopaedia 
Americana, is " in perfection only for a few mo- 
ments, and that at the time when it can be 
detached from the tree by a slight shaking of the 
branches." Now the black mulberry is not wholly 
singular in this respect. All the fruits, but more 
particularly the berries, are more or less subject to 
the same law. Indeed, it is well known of the 
strawberry, that it exhales the most delightful per- 
fume, and that its flavor is the most exquisite, when, 
on being perfectly ripe, it is first plucked from the 
stem. There can be little doubt, that the strength 
of the odor and the intensity of the flavor of this 
and other fruits, is always in proportion to their 
perfection. I believe that as the mulberry is in 
perfection only a "few moments," so the straw- 
berry and the raspberry are almost equally short 
lived. The blackberry may retain its perfection a 
little longer ; the cherry and plum longer still ; 
and the currant and gooseberry, perhaps, several 
days — though of the gooseberry I am more doubtful. 

Now the proper inference to be made from all 
this is, that unless we raise these fruits for our- 
selves, we are not likely to have them in per- 
fection. They will come to our tables too soon or 
too late ; unripe, or beginning to decay. And 
though they may not make us immediately sick, 
because we chance to eat them for once or twice 



THE STRAWBERRY. 219 

when they are not absolutely perfect, yet who will 
doubt that health and happiness, as well as the 
immediate gratification of the senses, are most 
favored by using them in their most perfect state ? 
And following out this idea, who, if he could help 
it, would ever buy them in a public market ? 

I grant, most readily, that thousands among us 
have their senses of taste and smell, even in very 
early life, so blunted by the errors of modem 
cookery, that they cannot distinguish the state of 
absolute perfection of a fruit from its unripe or 
half putrid state. There are thousands, even of 
children, to whom a strawberry is a strawberry, 
though it be not quite ripe, or though it has begun 
to putrefy. But their ignorance does not prevent 
their suffering, sooner or later — in their own per- 
sons or those of their posterity, or both — the pun- 
ishment of their transgressions, however ignorant 
they were in their commission. 

It were greatly to be wished that every person 
would raise his own fruits — especially of the per- 
ishable kinds of which I am now speaking. At 
least he ought to see that they are raised in his 
own neighborhood. 

Like the other fruits I have mentioned, straw- 
berries are most wholesome as the morning meal. 
How pleasant to pluck them soon after sunrise, in 
all their native richness and freshness ! The labor 



220 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

of gathering them, added to the rest of the stomach 
during the night, is the best possible preparative 
for their reception. In these circumstances, what 
more elegant breakfast can possibly be prepared — 
what more likely to raise the heart in thanksgiving 
to the bounteous Author of all good — than a 
basket or dish of strawberries, just from their native 
vines and stems, with all the richness of fragrance 
and deliciousness of taste, which in these circum- 
stances cluster around them ? And who is there, 
that with his mixed, heating, heated, greasy break- 
fast, might not well envy, were envy ever admissi- 
ble, his more fortunate neighbor, that can command 
for himself and his rising family, such simple, nutri- 
tious, cooling, wholesome and truly philosophic 
viands ? 

But shall we then -eat them alone ? you will 
perhaps ask. And I ask, in reply, Why not ? 
What objection is there — what objection can there 
be to making an occasional morning meal wholly 
of strawberries ? Such breakfasts have been made 
— and enjoyed, too — a thousand times. 

If it is said that a laboring person will feel faint 
before dinner-time after breakfasting on a meal of 
nothing but strawberries, I answer that this proves 
nothing against relying on them. It only proves 
that when we do so, we feel at first, a want of the 
stimulus which we have been long accustomed to 



THE STRAWBERRY. 221 

use at our breakfast — whether a natural or an 
unnatural one, the mere sensation of faintness does 
not determine. The faintness will be felt when 
we have omitted our bitters, our tea, our coiFee, 
our hot drink of any sort, our animal food, or our 
condiments ; and sometimes when we have omitted 
solid food and used only that which is liquid. It 
is felt least, however, in proportion as our meals 
are simple and our appetites unperverted. Even 
when they are not so, we have only to repeat 
the breakfast of strawberries a few times, and the 
faintness wholly disappears ; and if followed by a 
solid dinner, I mean one of bread or some more 
nutritious and solid substance, we shall be as well 
nourished, feel as much strength, and enjoy as 
much gustatory pleasure, as in almost any other 
way. 

If it is said that fruits are not wholesome in the 
morning, and this is a reason why we should not 
make a whole breakfast of them, I reply, by deny- 
ing the truth of the statement, antiquated as it 
may be. There is no time in the whole twenty- 
four hours, according to the general testimony 
of science and of dietetic writers, when fruits may 
be more healthfully as well as pleasantly used than 
in the morning ^ and the prejudice against their 
use must have arisen — so it seems to me — among 
the intemperate or the gluttonous, whose tastes are 



222 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

SO perverted that they never relish anything simple, 
especially on first rising. 

" But why not use wine, or milk, or cream, or 
sugar, with them ? What possible objection can 
there be to their use ? Whoever felt the worse for 
using strawberries in milk, or with bread ? " 

If it is a substantiated physiological truth — and 
I suppose it is — that one article of food at a meal, 
provided it is a wholesome article, (for a whole 
meal of butter and cheese, or meat, would not be 
so good as if its place was partly supplied by bread 
or some wholesome vegetable,) is better than more, 
then however quiet our stomachs may be, or how- 
ever undisturbed our feelings, after a mixed meal, 
it cannot be so conducive to health as a simple one. 
We are very often injured, or at least not benefited 
so much as we might be — which amounts to nearly 
the same thing — by an article which sits upon our 
stomachs perfectly well. When there is obvious 
disturbance after a meal, or at least pain, we know 
there is injury ; when all is quiet, there may or may 
not be. It is impossible, by our mere sensations, 
always to tell. 

Hence the principle that everything should be 
eaten by itself, as preferable to being mixed with 
anything else, even an article equally excellent. 
But because the strawberry, like everything else, is 
best eaten by itself, it does not follow that it is very 



THE STRAWBERRY. 223 

bad eaten otherwise. To be sure, the question 
may arise whether we have a moral right to use 
that which is inferior when we can just as well have 
that which is better ; nor can there be but one 
answer to it. 

Strawberries and milk, then, or strawberries and 
cream, or strawberries and raspberries, or lastly, 
strawberries and roasted apples — if old apples can 
be found at this season which are tolerably perfect 
— are among the best, that is, least injurious mix- 
tures. Of all these, however, strawberries and 
milk or fresh cream, are the best. They are also 
tolerable with brown bread ; or with bread made 
of unbolted wheat meal ; or even with bread made 
of the ordinary wheat flour, if not too new. 

Sugar with strawberries — or any substance more 
concentrated than milk or cream, I deem highly 
objectionable. There is as much sugar in the straw- 
berry itself, if in a perfect state when eaten — and 
if not, I repeat it, we ought to let it entirely alone — 
as is well adapted to the most healthy condition 
of our system. Honey, sugar, molasses, &£c. are 
too concentrated and too cloying in their nature to 
be the most conducive to health. 

Wine is still worse ; and yet there are numbers 
who think the strawberry does not agree with thena 
unless mixed with wine of some sort ; and many 
prefer for this purpose the astringent or port wine. 



224 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

But such persons, if residing in the country, must 
certainly have diseased stomachs. If they reside 
in the city, and buy their fruits in the common mar- 
ket, there is a natural reason why they should injure 
them when wine is not added ; and if it were abso- 
lutely necessary to load the stomach with such 
unripe and decaying stuff, I would say, take wine 
with it, for once — and thus relieve the stomach of its 
indigestible burden. But I would also say, do not 
load it again in the same manner. ' 

It is disgusting to see healthy, sensible people — 
sensible I mean in all other respects — putting wine, 
a poisonous substance, into a rich bowl of perfect 
strawberries. It seems to me like a kind of pro- 
fanation. It is, to say the least, a foolish practice ; 
but it is more, it is unreasonable. Nay, more still, it 
is unhealthy. -The use of milk and cream does not 
seem quite so bad ; but pray, why can we not " let 
well enough alone ? " Why reduce everything, or 
almost everything we eat, to a monotonous state, so 
as to make it smell or taste of some sort of grease 
or condiment? Why not enjoy the full happiness 
of all that variety which the Author of nature 
intended ? Why not eat milk by itself, and take, 
the benefit and the pleasure of it, unaltered by the 
flavor or smell of fruits of any sort ? And why 
not take each fruit by itself, and enjoy the full 
benefit of its peculiar flavor and fragrance, without 



THE STRAWBERRY. 225 

making it smell and taste of milk ? Is this continual 
mixing of things a natural, or just, or sensible idea ? 

I should hardly be disposed to object to an occa- 
sional dinner of strawberries, provided the indi- 
vidual had eaten a more solid breakfast, as bread, 
or corn, or potatoes ; though I still think the break- 
fast hour is the most appropriate time for fruits. 
But I would not, ordinarily, use two meals, in suc- 
cession, of strawberries. 

Were luncheons at all allowable — for physiologi- 
cally they are not, except for children — I would 
say, that next to using fruits at breakfast, the 
best time for them is at a luncheon, about raid- 
way between breakfast and dinner. For laborers 
who perspire much, and at ten or eleven o'clock 
become thirsty, and who, imagining themselves 
hungry as well as thirsty, demand food, nothing 
can be better than a small quantity of ripe, perfect 
fruit of some sort ; and in its season, I know of 
none better for this purpose than the strawberry. 

I ought, perhaps, just to say, that it has been 
set down by many dietetic writers as a preven- 
tive of the gravel ; and it is said, that persons 
inclined to this disease should eat it with great 
freedom. As a medicine, however, it is affirmed 
that the wild strawberry is preferable to the culti- 
vated. I believe that either is salutary. And 
if it should turn out that the strawberry has no 
15 



226 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

specific tendency to the bladder, I should not be 
greatly surprised. If the fact, that it prevents the 
gravel should be owing to its general cooling, 
healthful tendency, it would be just as important 
that we should use it, as if it had a more specific 
tendency. Whatever promotes the general health, 
tends to prevent the development of those particu- 
lar diseases to which individuals are predisposed. 
In other words, the best preventive of disease, in 
every form, is good health. He who so lives, from 
infancy to maturity, as to secure the most perfect 
health of all his organs and their functions — if 
such a person can be found — he it is who need not 
fear disease. Fevers, pleurisies, bowel complaints, 
gravel, colds, rheumatisms, consumptions, even, 
have no terrors for those who act up to the dignity 
of their own natures, physical and moral. Let 
them be as much predisposed to these diseases as 
they may, they cannot touch them. No person 
should, in hot weather, omit so important an article 
of diet as the strawberry ; nor must we forget to 
use it in a rational manner. Its use should be 
directed by the laws of God, in the human frame, 
rather than imposed by an arbitrary and tyrannical 
custom or fashion. 

I hardly need object, after what has been already 
said, to preserves, jams, &:c., or to strawberry 
puddings, pies or dumplings. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



THE RASPBERRY. 

Medicinal character of the raspberry. Its varieties. Every 
family should cultivate it, as they should the strawberry. 
Difficulties. How overcome. Female labor. 

The raspberry, in its nature, is a good deal like 
the strawberry, being cooling, gently laxative, and, 
in the language of medical books, anti-septic — ^by 
which is meant that it corrects, in the stomach and 
bowels, especially during the hot weather, any 
putrid tendency. It is also spoken of by foreign 
writers as possessing the same general medicinal 
properties. It is as nutritious as the strawberry, 
and I am sometimes inclined to think more so; 
and it does not more readily become acid in the 
stomach. 

The raspberry grows wUd, in the greatest abun- 
dance, in many parts of our coimtry ; and even in 
this condition is highly valuable as an article of 
food. But it is, like the strawberry, easily culti- 
vated ; and what renders it as worthy of our atten- 
tion as the strawberry, if not more so, is the fact 



228 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

that it flourishes so well in our northern climate, 
and in wild, rocky places and light soils ; whereas 
the strawberry requires a soil somewhat excellent. 
It must, however, be admitted, that a good soil 
improves the raspberry as much as it does the 
strawberry. 

The raspberry, like the strawberry, is in a state 
of absolute perfection only a very short time. 
Still, by cultivating the different varieties — white, 
purple, red, flesh-colored, yellow, &tc. — by plant- 
ing them at different times, and by watching them 
from day to day as we would our strawberry beds, 
and collecting in the morning all such, and such 
only, as are in their perfect state, we may — if we 
raise them ourselves — enjoy them for quite a long 
season. The small seeds of both the strawberry 
and raspberry have been supposed to render them 
hurtful, but I think their influence is favorable 
rather than otherwise. Still, I cannot go so far 
as to believe, with Willich, that the seeds of the 
apple and the stones of the cherry are to be eaten 
for the same reason ; that is, for the sake of promo- 
ting the action of the intestines. 

I do not, however, think it necessary or desira- 
ble, that we should raise them to an extent which 
would give a large family a full meal more than 
two or three times a week, even in the season 
when they are in the highest perfection : for the 



THE RASPBERRY. 229 

season of the strawberry and one or two other 
fruits, would trench upon that of the raspberry, 
and we certainly cannot consume everything. A 
very small patch of ground is sufficient to give a 
family several morning meals of each — the straw- 
berry and the raspberry — and this, too, with little, 
if any, interference with other employments. 

I have made the last statement, because many 
of my city and village readers, as soon as they 
come to my remarks on the importance of having 
each family raise its own stock of the short-lived 
summer fruits, will begin to wonder how it can be 
accomplished. Some suppose it will require the 
employment of a gardener, native or foreign, and 
this they think is beyond their means ; and so the 
project will be given up. Some are merchants, 
manufacturers, or mechanics ; and say they have no 
time. Some will make one apology, and some 
another ; and the consequence will be, as I sup- 
pose, that things will remain, after all, about as 
they were before. But whether they know it or 
not, all will be more or less influenced, in their 
apologies and final neglect of the subject, by indo- 
lence and the want of a desire for improvement. 

That there are indeed some slight difficulties to 
encounter, I am not disposed to deny. The 
greatest is a want of the necessary soil. And yet 
of the whole number of those who are without 



230 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

this indispensable preliminary, three fourths, at 
least, have it in their power to procure it, by pur- 
chase or by hire, did they understand, in any good 
degree, its importance. Most people might, in a 
little while, make such changes in their external 
circumstances, as would give them land enough on 
which to raise their summer fruits. There cer- 
tainly is land enough in the world — nay, even 
around our cities — 'to give each family a good-sized 
garden spot. 

One trifling difficulty is the want of a knowledge 
of the best method of raising these fruits. It 
happens, however, that there is almost always 
somebody to be found, especially around our towns 
and villages, who can give the information required, 
so far at least as to enable us to make a beginning. 
But let only a beginning once be made, and expe- 
rience will soon give all further needfiil instruction. 
Admitting, however, no knowledge on the subject 
could be had from the lips of any individual around 
us, there is another and perhaps better way remain- 
ing. This is to get some popular work on garden- 
ing, and begin with that for a teacher. In short, I 
do not believe that a person can be found, who, 
being fiilly convinced of the importance of raising 
his own strawberries and raspberries, ever failed to 
go on with it. A person quite awake to the sub- 



THE RASPBERRY. 231 

ject, will always find some means of acquiring all 
the needful information. 

Another difficulty still, will be the want of time. 
But this is no sort of difficulty at all, when we 
come to grapple with it. There are few if any 
families to be found, who caimot command the 
necessary time for raising a few beds of strawber- 
ries, and a small patch of raspberries. Tell me 
not of the pressure of your employments, your 
poverty, the necessity of your families, &£c. It is 
to relieve your pressure and necessity, and dimin- 
ish your poverty, at least in part, that I am writing. 
There are many shreds of our valuable time, 
which, for want of some employment of this kind 
and a disposition to use them, are lost to ourselves 
and the world. Indeed, there is seldom a family 
whose male members have not, every year, an 
abundance of time which they might devote to the 
accomplishment of all the purposes I have men- 
tioned. 

Suppose, however, it were not so. Suppose 
it were utterly impracticable for any male member 
of a family to attend to the department of horti- 
culture of which I have been speaking. Are 
there not females in the family ? Do tJicy not 
need, for the sake of their health, this very exer- 
cise ? Compare them, degenerated as they are, 
physically, with the females of the old world, and 



232 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

say whether they do not need more exercise in the 
open air — the mother of a family, especially. 

Is it still said, How can the mother of a family 
find time for this ? 1 shall show how, in the latter 
part of this work. I shall show how a very 
large proportion of the time now wasted, and worse 
than wasted in the repetition, at almost every meal, 
of half a dozen or a dozen, hot or at least newly 
prepared dishes, when nothing which can properly 
be called cooking needs to be repeated, in any 
ordinary circumstances of health, more than once a 
day, or even as often as that. It may not be 
improper, however, just to observe, that the saving 
of time to the female head of a family and to her 
daughters, during a single season, by breakfasting 
a part of the time on fruit uncooked, would be 
amply sufficient for the purpose of cultivating and 
gathering it. In other words, it will not talce up 
more time to cultivate and gather fruit for four or 
five breakfasts (one kind at a time) in a week, 
even if bread or bread and milk were taken at the 
same time, than it now takes to prepare the same 
number of breakfasts in the usual manner. Which 
is the most pleasant, depends, I suppose, upon 
circumstances, and especially upon early associa- 
tions; but the answer to the question, Which is 
most healthy, has, as I conceive, been long ago 
settled. 



THE RASPBERRY. 233 

The notion that out-of-door labor degrades a 
female, must, as I conceive, be given up. Females 
can never become what they ought to be, till they 
are employed more in the open air. Walking — 
and above all, that kind of movement abroad 
which goes by the name of "making calls" — 
can never answer the purpose. It is indeed better 
than no exercise at all, but it does not come up to 
the real wants of female nature. It exercises, too 
much, some parts of the frame, and leaves, almost 
without exercise, some of the others. Besides, 
the mind and feelings are not enough refreshed 
in mere walking. There is something done to the 
mind and body both, in cultivating and pruning the 
grape vine, and in weeding, and watering, and 
attending the strawberry, raspberry, &;c., which, 
so far as I know, cannot be fully accounted for on 
any known principles of philosophy or physiology, 
but which is as important to the female as to the 
male ; perhaps more so. The pure air, the fra- 
grance of leaves and blossoms, the natural color 
for the eye to rest upon, and many more things 
which I have not room to mention, come in 
undoubtedly for a share in the result ; but there 
are probably other influences which as yet elude 
our observation. 

After devoting several pages to the consideration 
of the raspberry, not excluding even the method 



234 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

of cultivating it, I shall not be likely to satisfy the 
expectations of those who are unhappy unless 
they are perpetually employed in something in the 
shape of cookery, if I do not just allude to the 
creams, jams, jellies, marmalades, pies, ices, waters, 
vinegars, sherbets, sponges, drops, &,c., which are 
sometimes prepared from this rich and delicate 
substance. But I shall only name them. Those 
who are determined to spend precious time in 
making these useless preparations, must consult 
other works for information respecting them. Like 
most other books of little comparative worth, they 
are sufficiently numerous ; and sometimes suffi- 
ciently expensive. 



ift 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



THE BLACKBERRY. 

The best variety of this fruit. Raising it ourselves. The 
Dewberry. Prejudice against the high blackberry. Anec- 
dote to show how unfounded it is. Abuses of the black- 
berry. 

The blackberry, next to the strawberry and the 
raspberry, is one of the best table fruits in our 
country ; and one which merits much more atten- 
tion from horticulturists than it has generally re- 
ceived. There are many varieties of this fruit, 
both high and low. I think the low or running 
kind the best, on the whole, though by no means 
the richest or the sweetest. Both kinds, however, 
are excellent ; and they are not near so perishable 
as many other berries. Still they can be kept but 
a very short time after they are plucked perfectly 
ripe from the vines, especially the low or running 
sort ; and therefore it is that I would not advise 
my readers to buy them from the market. They 
may possibly be tolerable, bought there, but nevor 
excellent. The better way is to raise them, if you 



236 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

have a garden or field of your own ; and if not, 
buy them of a neighbor, with the privilege of pick- 
ing them for yourselves. You can far better afford 
to give nine-pence a quart for them, if you pick 
them yourselves, than if you buy them in the pub- 
lic maiket. 

The rules and remarks in connection with the 
strawberry and the raspberry, will so generally 
apply to the blackberry, that I need not repeat 
them. The blackberry forms a most delicious and 
nutritive breakfast now and then, for those who 
possess a pure taste ; and if it is a little more astrin- 
gent than the strawberry, it is nearly as wholesome. 

The dewberry, though much smaller, appears to 
be very nearly related to the low or running black- 
berry in its properties, especially in its astringency ; 
but I think it less wholesome. Much, however, 
depends on the soil in which it grows. On some 
soils, and especially in particular seasons, I have 
observed it to be much sweeter than on others. 

There is a very strong prejudice, in many parts 
of our country, against the high blackberry. It is 
said to produce the dysentery ; and to be always 
dangerous, but especially so, when that malady is 
abroad. I remember the time when I would almost 
as soon have swallowed arsenic as this fruit — so 
strongly bad the impression been made on ray mind 
that it was injurious. The notion of its hurtful or 



THE BLACKBERRY. 237 

dangerous tendency is probably ' part and parcel ' 
of the general prejudice which prevails in reference 
to all fruits which come about the time, or rather a 
little before, the arrival of the summer and autum- 
nal diseases. 

I remember to have become skeptical on this 
subject at a very early period of my life. It was 
not, however, till I became a medical student, that 
I completely broke the spell in which my mind had 
been bound. Residing in a neighborhood where 
the dysentery was raging, and being often requested 
to render gratuitous assistance, especially by watch- 
ing with the sick, I was perpetually reminded of the 
necessity of taking every proper precaution to pre- 
serve health. In this state of things, the question 
arose whether or not I ought to eat fruits, which 
just at that time were abundant. Contrary to the 
wishes of my friends, and in spite of the early pre- 
judice which prevailed, I ate ripe fruits, especiaHy . 
pears, very freely, through the whole sickly season, 
and without apparent injury. I have since done 
the same, and have known it done by others ; 
always without apparent injury, and usually with 
obvious benefit. I am aware that a few instances 
of this kind are not decisive of the question ; but 
they have some w^eight on my own mind, and serve 
to confirm opinions otherwise derived. I beheve 
that the high blackberry, used in moderation, for 



238 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

an occasional breakfast, might prevent dysentery, 
but would never produce it. 

Blackberries are often made into pies, puddings, 
&c. Blackberry jelly is also very common in fash- 
ionable life ; and we sometimes hear of blackberry 
powder. All these, however, as my readers will 
of course expect me to say, are objectionable. Our 
blackberry pie is least injurious. Baked with a 
coarse crust, of unbolted and unleavened wheat 
meal, the berries retain much of their native excel- 
lence. They are not, however, so rich, or delicious, 
or agreeable to a pure appetite, as when just plucked 
from the vines and eaten in their native freshness ; 
nor are they as wholesome. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



THE WHORTLEBERRY. 

An error. The whortleberry with milk. Not improved by 
cookery. Varieties of this fruit. 

The author of the work entitled " Sure Methods 
of Improving Health and Prolonging Life," says 
that the whortleberry is very unwholesome. But 
be gives no reasons why it should be so ; and I 
have never heard or read anything which had 
the slightest tendency to lead me to adopt such an 
opinion. These mere assertions, when confronted 
by the experience of thousands, weigh but little. 

If the whortleberry, for wholesomeness, is not 
even superior to the strawberry, the raspberry, or 
the blackberry, I am sure it is of the berries, the 
next in order. It is at once agreeable, delicate, 
rich, uncloying, nutritious, and easy of digestion. 
It makes a most satisfying and wholesome break- 
fast or dinner ; and if there be a fruit — I do not 
believe there is however — which is improved by 
conjoining it with milk, it is this. I may say, at 
least, that the two articles unite in the stomach 



^■■■a 



240 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

more readily than almost any other two articles, 
so widely different in their constitution, with which 
I am acquainted. Eaten with bread of various 
kinds and with rice, if people will not eat them 
alone, they are comparatively excellent. 

But with what readiness soever they unite with 
other articles of food, they are, of all other fruits, 
most impaired in their excellent qualities, by being 
made into pies and puddings, or by being cooked 
in any other manner. It is a matter of utter 
astonishment to me that any of the smaller fruits 
can be so highly esteemed as they are by many, 
when half their native sweetness and excellence, 
and nearly all their peculiar life and richness are^ 
destroyed by cookery. The least amount of arti- 
ficial heat appears to me to injure them ; and an 
amount of heat which is commonly applied to cook 
the substances with which they are connected, 
would render them insipid and almost worthless. 

There are two sorts of whortleberries among us — 
the black and the blue. Some prefer one kind 
and some the other. I know not which is best, 
when both are so excellent. Dr. Paris speaks 
of the red whortleberry, but I have never seen it 
in the United States. I have, however, usually 
found the blue whortleberry rather the sweetest ; 
though much depends, in regard to both, on the 
dryness of the soil, and on the season. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



THE GOOSEBERRY, CURRANT AND GRAPE. 

Character of the gooseberry. When useful. The currant. 
Used unripe. The grape. What varieties useful. 

The gooseberry is less wholesome than most 
of the small seeded fruits ; but would be more 
wholesome than it usually is, if people would not 
swallow the skins, which being highly indigestible, 
often prove a source of irritation to the stomach 
and bowels. The gooseberry approaches some- 
what nearer to the cherry, in many of its proper- 
ties, than to the currant. 

It cannot be denied, that if perfectly ripe and 
well masticated, and the skins carefully rejected, 
this berry forms a very tolerable article of food ; 
and if it is somewhat lower in the scale of excel- 
lence than the strawberry, raspberry and whortle- 
berry, it is much lighter than the cherry or the 
currant. It is slightly acid in its most perfect 
state ; but its acidity is highly agreeable to the 
taste of most persons. There are, however, sev- 
16 



242 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

eral varieties of the gooseberry ; some of which 
are much better than others. 

Gooseberry pies, puddings and sauces, are 
among the more fashionable viands of the luxu- 
rious ; but if there were no other objections to 
their use, when thus compounded with other articles, 
their tough, indigestible and unwholesome skins 
are against them. Of gooseberry creams, custards, 
jams, preserves, marmalades, pancakes and vinegars, 
I have nothing to say, for reasons which will be 
obvious. This fruit is also sometimes dried and 
bottled. 

The Currant. — Some will be surprised that I 
regard this very common fruit — so easily raised 
and so generally admired — as quite inferior, viewed 
as an article of food, to all those which I have 
mentioned. But thus it is. Though extremely 
fond of it myself, I do not believe it among the 
most nutritious or the most wholesome of summer 
fruits. I think that as an occasional article of 
food, say used once a week or so for breakfast, it 
may answer an excellent purpose ; but it seems to 
me both too sour and too innutritions to be very 
extensively and steadily used. So far as luncheons 
are admissible at about ten o'clock in the forenoon, 
the currant, especially the red and the white 
species, is admissible. The black currant is among 



THE GOOSEBERRY, CURRANT AND GRAPE. 243 

the most undeserving of the whole tribe of summer 
fruits, and is scarcely worth the trouble of raising. 
I am aware that it is sometimes used in fashionable 
cookery j but it is unworthy the notice even of the 
fashionable. The flesh-colored species I have 
never seen. 

The currant is most used as food, so far as I 
have observed, while yet unripe. For this pur- 
pose it is soaked, scalded and sweetened ; and 
sometimes made into pies. In this form, it can 
scarcely fail to be productive of disease. Its acid — 
though in a riper state it is changed into the mild 
and more wholesome citric or malic acids — is, while 
green, injurious. Besides, its skins, at this stage 
of its progress, are highly indigestible. 

As a medicine, the juice of the ripe currant is 
somewhat valuable ; and the currant wine is quite 
famous. Except as a medicine, however, I should 
not recommend it ; nor is it very often useful for 
medicinal purposes. 

Currant pies are, generally speaking, among the 
most indigestible substances in the form of pies ; 
and the crust seems beyond the digestive powers 
even of the ostrich. Need I speak here of bottled 
currants, of currant water, currant gruel, currant 
fritters, currant jam, currant jelly, currant sauce, 
currant sherbet, and the like ? They may do to 
speak of, as specimens of human weakness and 



244 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

folly, but not as fit substances for the human 
stomach, especially while in health. 

The Grape. — ^Most kinds of grapes which grow 
wild, in this country, are very unfit for the stomach ; 
and hence it is, that to those who know of no 
other kinds, the encomiums which have been lav- 
ished on them have been either misunderstood or 
misplaced. Objections are, however, made to the 
husks as well as to the stones ; and to the former, 
in most instances, as I think, with good reason. 
But the white, or rather light green, foreign or 
Madeira grape, cannot be unwholesome in any 
part of it, if thoroughly masticated. And as an 
occasional breakfast, if eaten in this manner, I 
know of few articles of diet more wholesome. I 
speak, of course, without reference to the expense ; 
for it is so expensive that few economical people 
will venture upon its frequent use. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



THE CHERRY. 



Proper selection of cherries. Swallowing the stones. Its 
evils. Drinking wine or spirits with cherries. No cook- 
ing into pies, puddings, &c., admissible. Varieties of the 
cherry. It should be eaten in the morning. 

There are many varieties of the cherry — some 
of which are far preferable to others ; and a few 
of them are comparatively wholesome, if eaten 
with proper cautions and restrictions. As a gen- 
eral rule, they are far better food than the currant 
or the gooseberry, if they are not almost equal to 
the blackberry. 

In eating cherries, care should be taken to select 
those which have the thinnest skin, and the driest 
pulp. Or whatever may be the thickness of the 
skin, be careful to secure as mealy or dry a pulp as 
possible ; and above all, be careful not to swallow 
the stones or kernels. 

I am aware that both these last opinions will 
meet with opposition. The most juicy cherries are 
usually most highly esteemed. But they are cer- 



246 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

tainly more flatulent in proportion as they are juicy ; 
that is, they require stronger digestive powers. And 
as to the general belief, so current that it has almost 
become a maxim, that if we eat the. stones of cher- 
ries, the fruit will not hurt us, nothing can be more 
untrue. They ought to be avoided with the utmost 
carefulness. It is true, that in a vast majority of 
instances, they seem to cause no perceptible injury, 
except a little of that irritation which other foreign 
bodies of the same size — say little pieces of wood — 
always have a tendency to' produce, from the fact 
that they are wholly indigestible ; and being so, the 
digestive powers seem roused into action, some- 
times a little violent, to resist them. And yet the 
mischief may be far more serious. There is a 
region of the intestines, which such comparatively 
heavy bodies find it difficult to pass ; in which they 
have been known not only to lodge, but to form 
large concretions or calculi, which have finally pro- 
duced death. A few examples of this sort are on 
record ; and though this terrible result is not frequent, 
no one who swallows cherry stones, can be certain 
that the case may not be his. My readers will 
judge for themselves, therefore, with how much 
safety old maxims can be followed, simply because 
they are old maxims — especially that in question, 
which encourages a practice so unnatural, were it 
not highly dangerous. 



THE CHERRY. 247 

There is one objection to swallowing cherry 
stones which I do not recollect to have seen men- 
tioned. It is the danger of their falling into the 
windpipe, or rather the danger of their producing 
death, should such a thing happen. The Author 
of our natures has so wonderfully constructed our 
throats, that if we pursue the work of masticating 
and swallowing our food slowly and rationally, and 
do not talk and laugh too much while we are 
eating, it is scarcely possible for anything to get 
into the windpipe ; although everything we eat 
and drink has to pass directly over the little open- 
ing, at its top. But children, and even some 
adults, do not always eat rationally ; and hence it is 
very common for small pieces of food to fall into 
the windpipe, or, as it is commonly said, go the 
wrong way. These usually produce more or less 
of immediate irritation and coughing, during which 
they are often dislodged and thrown out ; but some- 
times they remain. When they remain, especially 
if they are soft substances, as pieces of bread or 
fruit, they are gradually softened and removed by 
absorption — or perhaps thrown out by a cough which 
is but slight, and in pieces so small as hardly to be 
observed. If they are hard bodies, like an uncooked 
pea, or a cherry stone, they are sometimes coughed 
up, but at others they remain ; and when they 
remain, they must sooner or later cause great trou- 



248 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

ble. If they cannot be removed by a surgical ope- 
ration, which consists in opening the windpipe, on 
the outside, and taking out the offending substance, 
they will be very likely to cause death sooner or 
later, either by ulceration or otherwise. Many 
deaths are caused in this way every year ; and the 
cause of some of them may never be suspected. 
The child " gets choked," perhaps, and coughs 
for some time ; but at length seems to get over it, 
or so nearly over it tjiat no one supposes anything 
remains in the windpipe. If the substance deposited 
there is smooth, like a cherry stone, it may remain 
so long before it begins to produce trouble, that the 
parents of the child forget the circumstance of his 
" getting choked," and the physician not having 
skill to detect the cause, the patient lingers and dies. 
If careful and scientific examinations of the body, 
immediately after death, were more common than 
they now are, there would still remain a chance of 
detecting and exposing the evil. But it happens, 
unfortunately, that there are in many parts of our 
country strong prejudices against these dissections, 
useful as every rational person will admit them 
to be. 

Now the objection to which I have alluded is 
founded on the carelessness of childhood, and the 
danger of such accidents. If a child is talking or 
laughing — and children, we all know, are very apt 



THE CHERRY. 249 

to talk and laugh while they are swallowing cher- 
ries and cherry stones^^nothing is more easy than 
for these smooth little bodies to slip down the wind- 
pipe ; and nothing is more possible than that they 
may remain there undiscovered or unsuspected till 
death. Or even if discovered, a surgical operation 
is sufficiently severe, one would think, to deter us 
from exposing ourselves so foolishly or wantonly to 
its necessity. 

Connected with the subject of cherries, is one 
popular error which I wish to expose. It is often 
said — or rather used to be before the days of 
" temperance " — that if a person has eaten too 
much fruit, a little brandy, or some other sort of 
spirit, would correct the evil. This indulgence was 
particularly extended to cherries. The remark was 
probably founded in truth. The spirit, by rousing 
the stomach, for once, to violent action, enables it 
to carry off a load which it could not otherwise 
have disposed of, whether that load were cherries 
or something else. Just as the spur or the whip 
may prove the means of enabling a horse to go 
beyond his natural strength, for once, and carry a 
load quite too heavy for him ; with this difference, 
however, in favor of the spurred horse, that he is 
far less injured than the spurred stomach, and far 
less likely to refuse to carry even a rational load 
the next time a demand is made. 



250 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Nor does this disclose, without saying a little 
more, the whole evil. The indulgence of using 
spirits to remove one excess, emboldens us to repeat 
an excess which we find so easily removed, and by 
such a pleasant remedy ; and not only to use spirits 
after eating cherries, but after eating other kinds of 
fruits ; and not only to use spirits, but wine and 
cider. Indeed, though I am almost ashamed to say 
it, such has been the extent of this error, that we 
find some dietetic writers telling us that such is the 
tendency of many fruits to produce fermentation, 
flatulence, or diarrhoea, that a glass of old wine is 
very proper to promote their digestion. What 
evils must not society endure, so long as it is infested 
with such teachers of morality as these ? 

A meal of cherries, whether it be breakfast or 
dinner, should always be moderate in quantity, and 
slowly swallowed ; and as I have before insisted, 
the stones should be rejected, as much as if they 
were poisonous. All cooking of cherries is inad- 
missible, and for many and various reasons. The 
cherry puddings and pies of our country, are much 
prized by many ; but they are a most stupid con- 
cern, to say nothing of their tendency on health, and 
the changes the cherries undergo, and the new com- 
bination produced in their cookery. Dried cher- 
ries are by no means proper to be eaten, though 
some appear to be fond of them. 



THE CHERRY. 251 

It is Utterly inconceivable how a rational appe- 
tite, formed to relish a pure, plain, unperverted pud- 
ding, and the plain, but rich, juicy, delicious fruits 
which the Creator has bestowed in such profusion, 
can ever be willing, even on the score of gustatory 
pleasure, to eat cooked fruits, especially the smaller 
fruits like cherries ! I say it is utterly incon- 
ceivable how this happens ; but I mean, rather, 
that it would be, were we not in a world where 
people learn to eat with a high rehsh almost 
anything which they please, not excepting whole 
animals. 

The varieties of the cherry, even of the com- 
mon kind, are exceedingly numerous ; and their 
excellence is equally various. The varieties of the 
choke cherry are almost as numerous as those of 
the more common sort. They are all more or less 
astringent ; too much so, perhaps, for frequent use. 
Some of them, however, are very rich and nutri- 
tious ; though they are all rather hard of digestion, 
and if taken at all, should be taken in the morning, 
in the form of a light breakfast, and when we are 
in the most perfect health. The small black cherry, 
or fruit of the wild cherry tree, though often eaten, 
is wholly inadmissible. I do not know that this 
fruit contains, as the tree does on which it grows, 
the prussic acid ; but it contains other properties 
little less injurious. 



252 ' THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

On the subject of fruits a little more explana- 
tion may be necessary. I have represented the 
gooseberry and cherry, for example, to be greatly 
inferior to the raspberry and the strawberry, in 
point of real excellence ; and yet, if neither of the 
latter could be had by reasonable effort, during the 
hot season, I would use, with due caution, an occa- 
sional meal of one of the former. And if circum- 
stances prevented my getting any other fruit, I 
would eat more freely even of currants and plums 
than would be admissible in other circumstances. 

Again, if I could not get the better fruits in a 
more perfect state — 'Say, if I was compelled to get 
it half ripe or half decayed from the public mar- 
kets — 'I would use that which was somewhat infe- 
rior, which could be procured from my own or some 
neighboring garden. 

The same remark will apply to many other 
things and circumstances. Thus, though I would 
not prefer a dinner to a breakfast of fruit, yet if 1 
were so situated that I must eat the fruit at dinner 
or go without it, I would prefer the former ; at 
least occasionally — for one meal a day of ripe fruit 
of some sort during the hot season, seems to me 
next to indispensable. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 



THE PLUM. 

The plum indigestible. It should be eaten alone. The 
prune. 

The plum, though highly delicious to most 
persons, especially in the case of the more perfect 
varieties, as the garden plum, meadow plum, &;c., 
is more doubtflil as to its wholesomeness than any 
of the fruits I have yet mentioned. Strong sto- 
machs may indeed digest it ; but it appears to me 
that the strength of this organ would be more 
profitably expended on something else than on so 
doubtful an article, unless, indeed, no other fi'uit 
can be obtained. But to most persons, in society, 
enfeebled as their stomachs are, by abuses, plums 
are very apt to occasion too much relaxation and 
irritation of the stomach and bowels ; and some- 
times even colics. Whenever the plum is eaten, 
it should be eaten alone, unconjoined with any 
other aliment whatever. This advice, respecting 
the plum, is given even by the old English writers. 



254 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

This may be the appropriate place for saying 
something of the prune, wliich is neither more nor 
less than a dried plum. The prune is usually 
imported ; but aU our plums would make prunes. 
This is by no means one of the worst articles of 
food, especially when boiled, or rather stewed. In 
this condition, it is indeed often ordered for the 
sick ; but it is equally good for those who are well. 
I do not mean by this, that a stewed prune is as 
good as a raw apple or an uncooked strawberry ; 
but only that when no better fruit can be had, it is 
tolerable ; and it is probably the best of all the 
dried fruits which can be obtained, unless it is the 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 



THE MELON. 

The muskmelon. Hot bed cultivation. The watermelon. 
How sometimes raised. 

" The farinaceous fruits," says Dr. Paris, " are 
universally unwholesome." Of what he calls the 
farinaceous fruits, melons are the most important. 
Now I regard this condemnation of the melon 
tribe as quite too sweeping. 

The muskmelon and the watermelon are both 
in extensive use among us, and when perfectly 
ripe, and raised in a natural manner, without the 
use of strong fresh manures, and without any forc- 
ing or hot bed process, are by no means as mjuri- 
ous as some writers have represented them to be. 
Indeed, I regard them both, in the absence of 
the summer fruits, which are preferable, as rather 
useM. An occasional meal of either is much 
better than no fruit at all. 

" The watermelon," says the Encyclopaedia 
Americana, " serves the Egyptian for meat and 
drink ; " that is, doubtless, during a small part of 



256 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

the year — for I do not think it sufficiently soUd or 
nutritious to form the sole food of man for any 
great length of time, even in warm climates. Were 
either to be used exclusively as a daily article 
of food, the muskmelon would be preferable. 

Some persons have a kind of antipathy to the 
smell and taste of this fruit ; of which class of 
individuals the author was one. This antipathy, 
however, can be easily overcome. 

Having alluded to the manner of raising melons, 
it is proper, perhaps, that I should just observe, 
that watermelons — and for aught I know, musk- 
melons too — in the immediate neighborhood of 
cities, are often raised by the aid of the most offensive 
manures of which the imagination can well conceive. 
Under this culture they thrive most luxuriantly. 
And the same or nearly the same thing, may be 
said of the method of raising many of the vegeta- 
bles about cities. It may be said, at least, that 
they are raised by means of strong fresh manures, 
whose effects on vegetables, according to the ob- 
servation of Dr. Whitlaw and others, are very 
unfavorable. In some instances they render them 
actually poisonous. But on this point, in a work 
like the present, it will hardly be expected that I 
should enlarge. Enough, if I succeed in dropping 
one of those words or hints, which " to the wise,'* 
are said to be " sufficient." 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



THE CUCUMBER. 

Evils of the cucumber overrated. Ripe cucumbers. Not 
very nutritious. 

The cucumber, I suppose, will hardly be re- 
garded as a fruit, even if the melon should be ; but 
it was found more convenient to class it thus. 
Both appear to be of the same family, though the 
cucumber is the least wholesome. I do not find, 
however, anything in its nature, when ripe, which 
should render it deserving of that general condem- 
nation which it has received. It is true, 1 never 
, eat it ; but it is because I have hitherto been able 
to get fi-uits which I consider far preferable ; be- 
cause I have no moral right to use the worse 
article when I can as well have the better ; and 
because I have usually had it presented, prepared 
in a manner totally unfit for the human stomach. 
Custom seems to demand, now-a-days, that cucum- 
bers should be eaten not only uncooked, but also 
unripe — very unripe. If eaten green, it seems to 

me it should be cooked — perhaps in milk, like 
17 



258 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

the gourd, which is another of the melon family. 
If not cooked, it should at least be ripe, like the 
watermelon and the muskmelon. 

Some may smile at the idea of ripe cucumbers, 
and say that the very thought of them, like the 
smell, is offensive. But I am not speaking of the. 
decayed or putrid cucumber ; that is quite another 
thing. . The truly ripe cucumber is quite as agree- 
able to the taste and smell of any individual, as 
the muskmelon ; and to those whose taste has not 
been strangely perverted, much more so. It was 
probably eaten only when ripe, at &st ; but a fas- 
tidious taste, by requiring it earlier and earlier, has 
at length brought about the state of things we see. 

But I must not omit to say, that even the ripe 
cucumber is not very nutritious. It is rather a 
medicine than an article of food ; being cooling, 
bland, and gently laxative. To produce its good 
efiects — so far as it has any — it should be eaten in 
great moderation, and without that pepper, oil, 
salt and vinegar, which are usually applied to it 
while green, and which, if it be eaten in this state, 
are always required. But whatever other uses are 
made of the cucumber, I entreat the reader not to 
use it in the form of pickles. These, of almost all 
the forms of vegetable substances, seem to me 
worst adapted to the human stomach ; and I can- 
not but hope will be shunned by every reader. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



THE FIG AND RAISIN. 

The fig extensively used for food. Fresh figs. Dried figs. 
Figs and bread. The raisin. 

'1'he fig has, in all ages, formed a veiy con- 
siderable article of diet in many parts of the East ; 
especially in the south of Europe, where it is said 
to be brought upon the table, either in its fresh or 
dried state, for five months of the year. In these 
circumstances it is a very tolerable article of diet — 
soft;, sweet, firagrant, and of a purplish color. But 
it seems to me, it would be much better if it were 
suffered to ripen in the natural way, instead of 
having the ripening process artificially hastened. 

Contrary to the rule which generally obtains in 
relation to dried finiit, the dried fig is said to be 
more easy of digestion than the fresh ; though 
perhaps less nutritious. Still, it is highly nutri- 
tious, even in its dried state. Dried figs and 
barley bread are said by travellers, to form the 
common food of the lower classes of inhabitants in 
Greece and the Archipelago. 



^60 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEE. 

One objection to the use of the fig as an article 
of food among us, is the numerous animalculae 
which infest it. Were it not for this and the 
expense, 1 should be half disposed to recommend 
the fig with bread, as an occasional breakfast, espe- 
cially for children. 

The Raisin. — There are several kinds of 
raisins. Some of them contain few if any seeds, 
and hence are probably rather more digestible than 
others. Besides, tlie quantity of sugar they con- 
tain disposes them to a rapid fermentation in the 
stomach. But in addition to this is another evil, 
greater than all. I allude to their tough, indigesti- 
ble skins. 

I do not deny, that when eaten alone, occasion- 
ally, or still more rarely with bread, they form a 
breakfast far better than thousands of breakfasts 
which might be mentioned. And yet, such break- 
fasts are not by any means among the best which 
could be named. 

In pies, puddings, &c., raisins are not to be 
tolerated, and I must protest against their firequent 
use in this way, as not merely a waste of time and 
property, but as a means of destroying more health, 
in fashionable life, than all the physicians, in high 
life, ever restored. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



NUTS. 

The chesnut much used by the ancients. Boiled chesnuts. 
How used, now, in Europe. Used for bread. 

I HAVE classed the various nuts together, both 
because I have very httle to say about them, and 
because what I have to say will, in general, be 
equally applicable to all. The more important of 
this class of substances are chesnuts, walnuts, 
hazelnuts, butternuts, peanuts and almonds. 

We are told by the most ancient histories, of 
men who in the first ages of the world lived almost 
entirely on acorns and chesnuts, and yet attained 
to a very advanced age. All this may, however, 
be fabulous. But of one thing we are certain, 
which is, that the chesnut, in its raw state, is highly 
nutritious to swine and many other quadrupeds. 
To say that it would be equally so to man, even 
were he early trained to its use, would be to affirm 
what I believe we -could not very well prove. 

Boiled chesnuts, however, form a highly nutri- 
tious article of diet, and are, on the whole, easy 



262 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

of digestion. I think that the worst objection to 
their use, in this way, is, that they are rather too 
nutritious, hke peas and beans. As an occasional 
dinner, however, they are not very objectionable. 
If; Those whose stomachs are as yet unaccustomed 

to simples, might find them rather flatulent. But to 
^ those whose digestive powers have any claim to 

be considered as healthy, they form a pleasant 
and excellent food, and sit well on the stomach. 

In the south of Europe the chesnut is much 
used for bread, puddings, &;c. ; and is regarded as 
pretty wholesome. Of late it has been exported, 
considerably, to this country, and is gradually 
coming into use. Our own chesnut, however, is 
finer grained and sweeter. But both are good, 
and deserving of more attention than they have 
hitherto received. 
' Those who regard a dish of boiled chesnuts as 

forming a vulgar dinner, can easily form them into 
pies, puddings, bread, cakes, &;c. They may be 
boiled and mashed ; or, if it should be preferred, 
they can be ground into a sort of flour before they 
are cooked. The flour and meal may also be 
mixed with various other kinds of flour or meal, to 
form such compounds as the fancy or the judg- 
ment may direct. 

Though all nuts are somewhat difficult of diges- 
tion on account of the oil they contain, yet the 



NUTS. 263 

butternut and walnut are most so. They may all, 
however, be occasionally eaten, when the stomach 
is strong*, at the breakfast hour; but never after a 
full meal of somethino; else. 

And here I am bound to exculpate the whole 
tribe of fruits and nuts from at least one half of the 
blame usually thrown upon them. They are said 
to be flatulent, indigestible, &c. But does any 
one wonder that they should be so, when we con- 
sider the manner in which they are used ? Are 
they not commonly eaten at the close of a full 
meal of something else, or in the evening just 
before going to bed ? In the former case, the 
stomach, though strong, is overtasked by an unrea- 
sonable load; in the latter,.. a task is imposed, 
which, though light, is too much for the circum- 
stances — it being always unsafe to eat anything, 
especially substances hard of digestion, just as we 
are going to bed. 

And hence it is, that notwithstanding all that is 
said about flatulence and difficulty of digestion, he 
who lives temperately and has a good — not a 
craving or fastidious — ^appetite, may eat a moderate 
meal of almost any kind of fruits or nuts that is not 
poisonous, without flatulence or trouble. I can 
certainly do this. And yet if I were to eat fruits 
and nuts as other people do, I should soon experi- 
ence all the ills of which they complain so loudly, 



264 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

and which have even found their way into the 
pages of so many dietetic writers. 

What they say, however, though it b^ enough 
to frighten one, will do pretty well for those 
whose stomachs are reduced to the pitiful neces- 
sity of being watched and tended, like the in- 
fant ; and who eat fruits and nuts either on a 
full stomach, or in circumstances almost equally 
objectionable. But their array of cautions is 
entirely useless, to him who is temperate in the 
largest sense, and who, after making an occasional 
breakfast of one of them, uncombined with any- 
thing else, masticates it well, and goes about his 
ordinary business to think no more of consequences 
till the hour arrives for the next meal. 

One important principle needs to be here re- 
peated ; which is, that almost all things, and of 
course almost all articles of food, may be said to 
be good or bad principally by comparison. Com- 
pared, for example, with hot bread and butter for 
breakfast, to a pure stomach, (I do not say a 
puny, debilitated one,) a meal of nuts, particularly 
of chesnuts, would be excellent. But compared 
with plain bread of unbolted wheat meal, whether 
leavened or unleavened, or with boiled corn, or 
even with good mealy potatoes, all the nuts, unless 
it is the chesnut, are, to say the least, unimportant ; 
and I should be inclined to say injurious. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



ANIMAL FOOD. 

Where animal food is admissible. Should be used, if used 
at all, principally as a condiment. What animals have 
been eaten. Arrangement of the subject. 

This is the third principal division of human 
aliments. I regret to be oblio;ed to recoo-nize ani- 
mal food as, in any sense, a primary aliment ; 
for I consider the resort to it as proper only in 
the case of infants, diseased persons, and the people 
of those regions or places where better food cannot 
be obtamed. It ought to be used only as a con4i- 
ment. 

I hope to live to see the time when farinaceous 
food will come to be so universally regarded as the 
staff of life, that no family will any more think 
of living without it, than did the family of Jacob 
in Canaan. To be out of bread, or grain to make 
it of, at that day, was to suffer all the horrors of 
famine ; notwithstanding the existence of flocks 
and herds somewhat numerous. The flesh of the 
latter was used, not as the principal dish on ordi- 



/ , 



266 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

nary occasions, but only as a condiment, or at feasts. 
Such it is even now regarded in many eastern 
nations. Tiiey would no more think of giving 
animal food the conspicuous place we do, than 
of hving on salt or pepper. 

Nearly every known animal in the world has, 
by some nation or other, savage, semi-civilized or 
civilized, been eaten ; from the stately elephant 
and horse, down to the snail and other insects still 
smaller and more offensive to our usual notions 
of propriety. 

If I were about to enter largely upon the sub- 
ject of animal food, I should arrange my articles in 
three divisions : — ^1. Milk and Eggs. 2. Flesh. 
3. Fish. But this division is hardly necessary to 
my present purpose. A few short sections to aid 
those who are obliged to have recourse to this 
sort of food, either for themselves or for others, is 
all that can be admitted. 

I shall say something of milk, butter, cheese, 
eggs, flesh — wild and tame — and fish. The chap- 
ter may be passed over by those who have risen 
above the necessity of studying the subject — of 
whom I would fain hope there are many. I do 
not think one in a hundi'ed of our population, 
except the diseased and veriest infants, ought to 
have anything more to do with animal food, if 
trained properly, than with alcohol. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 



MILK. 

What the circumstances are in which milk is admissible. 
Milk for infants. Milk for diseased persons. Use of it 
by the Arabs. Milk a cheap food. Healthy milk. Milk 
.poured on bread. Milk toast. 

Some may say that milk is not animal food, 
strictly speaking, but only an animal secretion. 
On this principle most of the fat of animals would 
not be animal food ; for what is that but a secre- 
tion ? 

It is a favorite doctrine with me, and I believe 
a true one, that we should always use those kinds 
of food which are best for us, provided, at least, 
they can be obtained without interfering with the 
rights of others. But when, under these circum- 
stances, we content ourselves with that which is 
only second best, we commit an error. So it is 
with most adults who, in our own country, use milk 
as food. 

But when a person cannot use food which is 
Detter for health and happiness than milk, he 



268 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

certainly ought to use it. It is on this principle 
that milk is assigned to the infant. The Author 
of his nature, seeing it best to introduce him to the 
present state of existence in his known weakness 
and helplessness, has adapted him, before hand, to 
the very best diet which in the nature of things 
could be furnished for him. It is most readily 
assimilated ; and though it is somewhat heating in 
its nature, it is the best medium through which to 
lead him off, as it were, from a food highly animal- 
ized, to one which is best adapted, in general, to 
the development and progress of his whole nature. 
Accordingly, after the lapse of a few months, 
his teeth begin to appear, indicating the proper 
period at which new forms of food should be 
presented. At this period, the common sense of 
almost all rational physicians in the world assigns 
him farinaceous food, in small quantity ; and the 
quantity is to be gradually increased, as he grows 
older, till he is weaned. Even for a time after- 
wards, common sense, with many, retains its sway, 
and they accordingly require that for a few years 
longer the farinaceous diet should be continued. 
It is true, some of them say, a change should be 
made back again, after the lapse of some time, to 
a mixed diet of animal and vegetable food ; but 
none of them tell us exactly when they should 
"turn the corner." They would gradually lead 



MILK. 269 

I 

them off from the use of animal food to vegetable, 
and . then, when their habits have been nearly 
formed to its use, and they are doing very finely, 
they would make them flesh-eaters again ! — I think 
it behoves them to tell us at what age the latter 
change should be made. 

I would not be in such great haste, as many 
are, to wean a child ; nor when weaned, would I 
give up, at once, the use of milk. I would leave 
off gradually, only ; continuing for some months, 
perhaps for several years, a greater or less quan- 
tity of cow's milk, properly diluted, for at least 
one meal a day — say for breakfast, when the 
stomach is empty. When I gave the milk, how- 
ever, it should form the principal part of the meal, 
for the time ; and if a little bread was used in 
connection with it, I would see that instead of 
being soaked in the milk to soften it, the child 
should properly masticate it. 

But when a child is once fairly weaned from 
milk, and is perfectly healthy, I would not return 
again to the use of it, so long as good farinaceous 
food could conveniently be had, and so long as he 
continued healthy. In a scrofulous or consumptive 
habit, however, should this arise, and in a few other 
cases of disease, or tendency to disease, I would, 
with the advice of the physician, use milk. Many 
a consumptive person has had his Hfe and useful- 



270 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

ness prolonged many years, sometimes twenty or 
thirty, by a milk diet.* 

There are other cases in which I think a milk 
diet is highly proper. Without the milk of his 
camel, how could the Arab traverse the desert of 
Sahara for more than a century ? Without it, 
what would many travellers do who find nothing 
else to eat that is not much worse ? 

" But what," it will be asked, " is the real ob- 
jection to milk ? 

First, it is too stimulating. Secondly, it is a liquid ; 
and liquids do not secure, to those who have teeth, 
a sufficient amount of mastication and insalivation ; 
and they impose too heavy a task upon the stomach 
and the whole of the digestive apparatus. Thirdly, 
it is almost always eaten wrong, when eaten. Milk, 
I repeat it, should be either eaten alone, or with 
something which is well masticated. But the usual 
way is to put • bread into it, or pudding, or hom- 
mony, or potatoes, or baked apples, or other fruits, 
so that here a double mischief is done. Not only 
is the milk swallowed without due mastication and 

* Such, at least, is the general testimony. But I have 
often suspected, the cure in these cases was less owing to 
the milk itself, than to the simplicity of the individual's 
habits. He confines himself, in these cases, to a single dish, 
instead of an endless variety. Now how do we know that if 
he were to confine himself as cheerfully, to bread, the conse- 
quences would not be equally favorable ? 



MILK. 271 

insalivatlon, but the solid substances too, through 
its intervention, go down in the same way. 

Some parents, especially in cities, seem to grudge 
their children the use of milk, when they really 
suppose they need it. They say it is top costly. 
I am surprised at this mistake — so very common. 
No person ought to think of the expense of milk 
once a day, even for a whole household, did they 
need it. It is one of the cheaper articles. A 
child of three years old should not use over apint 
and a half a day, and ten ounces of bread, if he ate 
nothing else. This is a very large allowance in- 
deed. And yet, in the dearest cities, this could 
not ordinarily cost over eight cents. This is fifty- 
six cents only a week, and it involves but little house 
work. But on this subject every one can make 
his own estimates. 

Milk, if eaten at all, should be new ; though it 
need not be swallowed the moment it is obtained 
from the cow. The cow should be healthy. She 
should not be confined, or fed on slops, or bad hay 
or pasture, or impure water. She should have 
pure air and water, and enough of exercise, and 
good grass or hay. All the cows of Paris have 
tubercles in their lungs, (the beginning of consump- 
tion,) so the most eminent European medical wri- 
ters say ; and there is no doubt that many of the 
cows about our own cities and towns are in the 



272 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

same sad predicament. If so, their milk should 
not be eaten ; it will be injurious.* I do not like 
boiling milk, either for porridge, or for any other pur- 
pose ; but I prefer boiling it to preserve it, to the 
practice of using it when sour. Nor do I at all 
like the practice of eating skimmed milk, as some 
families do. It is better with the cream in it. 

Cream poured on toasted bread, is quite a favor- 
ite dish with many. With dyspeptics, cream 
sometimes sits better on the stomach than milk. 
A few sweeten their milk or cream for the purposes 
I have been mentioning, but this I cannot recom- 
mend. If milk is used at all by healthy adults, I 
would advise them to use it as a condiment. Thus, 
I would pour a little good milk on a slice of bread, 
whether toasted or otherwise. Or I would pour it, 
in small quantity, on wheat mush, hommony, hasty 
pudding, and other puddings, johnny cake, beans, 
rice, potatoes, &c. For beans and rice, it is the 
best condiment that could possibly be used. How 
much better to train a family of children to use a 
little milk as a condiment, poured on their plates, 
than to spoil their stomachs with molasses, sugar, 
vinegar, pepper, butter, &;c.! 

. * People have been poisoned in considerable numbers by 
bad milk, and have occasionally died. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 



BUTTER. 

Butter on bread. " Made " dishes. Butter eating carried to 
tlie highest excess. The real evils of eating butter. 

A LITTLE fresh butter, spread on stale bread, 
and the latter well masticated, cannot be very 
hurtful. It gives a relish to the bread, which is 
favorable to its digestion. This, however, is say- 
ing but little in its favor ; for he has not a perfect 
appetite who cannot relish, keenly, the bread I 
have described without the butter. But this is the 
only instance in which I deem butter at all admis- 
sible. On new bread, of every form, on toasted 
bread, on puddings, rice, cakes, Sic, or mixed 
with food to shorten it, there can be no doubt of 
its injurious tendency. 

Even plain bread and butter, says Willich, 
require strong digestive powers, and to hot tem- 
pered and bilious persons, are pernicious. " I am 
inclined to think," he adds, " that it would be 
beneficial to society, if the making of butter were 
strictly prohibited, as well as the importation of 
18 



274 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

salt butter into every civilized country. Melted 
fat, or the drippings of baked and roasted meat, 
are equally, if not more pernicious to the stomach 
than even stale butter ; but both ought to be used 
only for greasing cart wheels ; never for injuring 
the human organs." 

One of the mischiefs attending the use of but- 
ter is, the more we use it, the more we are 
compelled to do so. The delicate female who can 
hardly swallow her bread without butter on it, little 
thinks that every indulgence of the kind renders a 
second indulgence still more necessary ; and that 
her stomach is, in this way, every hour growing 
more and more fickle. I knew one lady who 
carried her butter eating to such an excess, that 
she could scarcely relish a substance till it was 
almost half butter or lard. She has even been 
known to fasten a lump of butter to the end of a 
stick, and after holding it in the flame and turning 
it till the surface was beginning to melt, dip it in 
flour, then hold it in the flame again, then dip it in 
the flour — and so on, alternately dipping it and 
roasting it, till the whole consisted of a species 
of fritter thoroughly impregnated with butter, when 
she w^ould immediately eat it. And yet she won- 
dered why she had not better health, and how it 
was that Providence saw fit to leave her to suffer 
so much from dyspepsia I 



CHAPTER XL. 



CHEESE. 

General properties of cheese. Good cheese. Bad cheese. 
Cheese sometimes poisonous. Anatto. Arsenic. Grand 
objection to cheese. New and old cheese compared. 

Cheese is generally considered as quite indi- 
gestible, and therefore to be avoided by all those 
who have not very strong stomachs. If, however, 
a very little good cheese be taken in conjunction 
with other proper substances, aS' bread or rice, as 
a mere condiment, it can hardly be considered as 
positively hurtful, to those who are very vigorous. 
A stronger objection to its use is, that it is too con- 
centrated a substance — or. too pure a nutriment, 

I have spoken, however, of good cheese only. 
Bad cheese is among the worst of eatables. 
Cheese is even sometimes poisonous. I have 
known nearly a hundred persons poisoned at once 
by eating from a certain cheese. Other instances 
of the kind have occurred. I do not know that 
the cause of this phenomenon has ever been 
detected. Some have supposed it to be a vegeta-' 



276 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

ble poison, as the lobelia or the hemlock, eaten by 
the cows. 

The anatto or otto, so frequently used to give 
color to cheese, is slightly poisonous ; but there is 
another more striking method of poisoning cheese 
which has been discovered very recently. Some 
of our dairy women have fallen into the habit of 
adding a small quantity of arsenic, (ratsbane,) say 
a piece half as large as a small pea, to each large 
cheese, especially when made, in part, of old milk. 
The object is, to give it freshness and tenderness ; 
and the plan is said to succeed admirably. But it 
produces, or may produce, great injury to the hu- 
man constitution ; and some persons have been 
made immediately sick by it. 

My greatest objection, after all, to the use of 
butter and cheese both, grows out of the con- 
sideration, that their manufacture involves a great 
amount of female labor, while no permanent or 
substantial benefit is obtained. What can be more 
valuable than female labor, applied to the physical 
and moral management and early instruction of 
children ? 

If cheese is to be eaten at all, let it be eaten 
rather new than old ; and let it be well masti- 
cated. Do not eat grated cheese. Nor should it 
be toasted. Toasting, though with many a favorite 
process, only renders cheese more indigestible. 



CHAPTER XLI. 



_ EGGS. 



How eggs should be cooked. Rarely boiled. Poached. 
Artificial or " made " dishes. Fresh eggs. How to pre- 
serve eggs. Egg cider. Eggs and wine. 

Eggs are almost entirely pure nutriment, and 
when not cooked too much, are easy of digestion. 
When over-done, however, they are exceedingly 
difficult of digestion, especially their white or albu- 
minous part. The last coagulates at about 160° 
of Fahrenheit's thermometer ; and when once co- 
agulated, is no longer soluble by the gastric juice. 
It is also said by some that when hard boiled, 
they tend" to constipation of the bowels ; whereas 
whgn very slightly boiled, they are known to be 
laxative. 

This last is the state in which we ought to eat 
eggs, if we eat them at all. Some suppose they are 
best raw ; but this is going to the other extreme. 
They should be boiled just long enough to coagu- 
late slightly the greater part of the white, while 
the yolk still retains its fluidity. 



278 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

Next in point of wholesomeness to the boiled, is 
the poached egg ; but even in this form it is apt 
to be over-done. It should only be just sufficiently 
hardened, says Dr. Kitchener, that the white part 
may form a sort of transparent veil to the yolk. 

The third common form of cooking the egg 
among us is frying it. This is decidedly the worst 
form of all. It would be far more wholesome eaten 
raw. The very thought of frying the egg, to 
him even who knows but half the evils of frying 
in general, is enough to make him shudder. The 
albumen is hardened, and the animal oil of the 
yolk is rendered empyreumatic, or burnt. 

All artificial preparations of eggs, as in pan- 
cakes, &;c., however agreeable they may be to a 
perverted taste, are very apt to sit heavy on our 
stomachs, and corrupt our fluids. The yolk of 
eggs in any form has a tendency to putrefaction ; 
and people whose stomachs are not uncommonly 
strong ought not to eat any kind of food which is 
very putrescible. The eggs of our hens are the 
most wholesome ; the eggs of ducks and geese far 
less so. 

Great pains ought to be taken in regard to the 
freshness of eggs ; and no eggs should be used, in 
any form, which are not new. The reason of 
this prohibition will appear when it is remembered 
how readily they tend to putrefaction. " We can- 



i^Mb 



•EGGS. 279 

not be too circumspect," says Willich, " in the use 
of eggs, as to their freshness ; for examples are not 
wanting of persons, who, after having used cor- 
rupted or only tainted eggs, were seized with 
putrid fevers." How much of mischief, then, may 
be done, short of producing fever, by ignorant 
house-keepers ! * And how important is it, since 
they are so apt, notwithstanding their ignorance, 
to seize on every new recipe, whether philosophi- 
cal or unphilosophical, and follow its directions — 
perhaps to the destruction of the health or even 
the life of a favorite child or of a husband — how 
important it is, I say, that they should understand 
these things ! If they cooked everything simply, 
the danger would be less ; but they do not.' 
Complication is everywhere the order of the day. 
I know a lady of comparatively simple habits, but 
fond of cookery, who almost always keeps eggs by 
her, and who seldom fails to put them into one or 
more kinds of food which she brings to her table 
daily. And yet I cannot doubt that they are used 
three fourths of the time when in a state of incipi- 

* People are taken sick, for example. Well, the sickness 
is supposed to be the will of Providence, or the hand of fate ; 
when it is, more properly, their own will or ignorance, (x 
that of some house-keeper. Sometimes it results from the 
error of an ignorant physician or quack ; and the seeds of 
disease may have been sown months or years before we see 
their appropriate feuits. 



280 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

ent putrefaction. But if plain people poison them- 
selves, their families and their friends, how is it 
with the more fashionable — those who have lost 
sight of all simplicity ? 

It is true, we have not yet gone to the extreme 
of the French, who have more than three hundred 
methods of cooking the egg, and nearly seven hun- 
dred compounds into which the egg enters. But 
we have gone quite too far ; and are likely to go 
much farther, unless housewifery can be elevated 
to a science, and conducted in a truly christian 
spirit. 

Eggs are particularly obnoxious when mixed in 
any way with butter or fat ; and this constitutes 
one objection to fiying them. But it is not in fry- 
ing alone that we have this hurtful mixture ; it is 
everywhere. At fashionable tables we are con- 
stantly taking mixtures of butter and eggs. Yet it 
is not too much to say, that neither of these sub- 
stances, even when taken alone — but especially 
when combined — can be employed, (with the single 
exception of boiling the egg and spreading the 
butter on bread,) without mischief Even Dr. 
Dunglison says that eggs are never employed in 
the formation of compound dishes, without render- 
ing the aliment more difficult of digestion. He 
goes further indeed, and affirms that " every pre- 



EGGS* 281 

paration of eggs, and every made dish, are more or 
less rebellious." 

The preparations of food into which eggs enter 
are, as I have said, almost innumerable. Some, 
especially the delicate, will scarcely taste anything 
that is not tinctured with eggs or butter. 

There are various ways of preserving eggs from 
rapid putrefaction, but they are all more or less 
imperfect. The best way is to use them fresh, or 
not at all. 1 greatly prefer the latter. For the 
benefit of those who will keep them, I may observe, 
however, that they are said to keep best in lime 
water, fully saturated with the lime. 

Egg cider is a favorite drink in some parts of 
New England. It is made in various ways ; but 
the most common method is simply to break an egg 
or two into a quart of heated cider, with a little 
sugar or molasses, if the cider is too sour, and stir 
it violently by means of a wooden instrument pre- 
pared for the purpose. I have seen a family of 
children brought up to relish this as one of the 
greatest treats. And yet it is, as it were, a parent 
of abominations. Cider is bad enough for the 
human stomach ; but cider, eggs and molasses form 
a compound still worse, and one which deserves 
not to be named, except to expose its folly, in any 
decent circle or civilized society. 



282 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

Eggs swallowed in wine, without beating, is 
another fashionable but improper mixture. It is 
quite in vogue with the licentious, whether without 
or within the pale of our civil or domestic institu- 
tions. They suppose, often, that it has the power 
of repairing suddenly the waste, and correcting the 
abuses, of their frames. But it usually only lures 
them on, by its fallacious appearances, to greater 
and more criminal errors. 



CHAPTER XLII. 



FLESH AND FISH. 

General remarks. Simplicity in diet. Best kinds of flesh. 
Wild animals. Fattened animals. Salted meat. Smoked 
meat. Meat pies. Boiling. Broiling. Baking. Frying. — 

- Fish. Animal food sometimes poisonous. Shell fish. 

I HAVE already given my opinion against the 
use of animal food of all kinds, where better food 
can be had ; and have stated briefly, though not 
fully, my reasons. The moral evils, however — 
the moral insensibility which its familiar use in- 
volves — to which I but barely alluded, is, after all, 
the most serious. But since people will continue 
for some time to use animal food, in some of its 
forms, it seems incumbent upon me to state, as 
briefly as possible, what forms I deem least objec- 
tionable. Milk I have attempted to show to 
be the least injurious; and butter, cheese and 
eggs, next. 

On one point, however, I wish not to be mis- 
understood. There are other errors in regard to 
food besides quality. It would be folly to pre- 



284 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

tend that a meal of bread, or even of bread and 
milk, though not naturally the best food for an 
adult, would not be better — far better — than a 
thousand other dishes or combinations of dishes 
which might be mentioned, even if made up from 
simple farinaceous articles ; and, as has been 
already said, I am not sure that the benefits attri- 
buted to changes from the common abuses of civil- 
ized hfe to a steady diet of bread and milk, have 
not been owing to the simplicity rather than to the 
quality of the adopted dishes. But be this as it 
may, there can be little doubt that a moderate 
allowance of milk, for one of our daily meals, or 
bread and butter, or bread and cheese, or bread 
and eggs, or even of lean meat properly cooked, 
would be far less hurtful in the end, setting moral 
tendencies aside, than an extravagant quantity 
of bread, or pudding, or even of potatoes, espe- 
cially if hot ; or a combination of a dozen sorts, 
some only half masticated, some incompatible with 
each other, and some too hot or too highly sea- 
soned. 

When, therefore, I express my dislike to flesh, 
and speak of its inferiority to other forms of food, 
I am not comparing extravagance or abuse in the 
use of the one with moderation and reason in the 
use of the other ; for this would involve unfairness, 
and partiality, and untruth. 



FLESH AND FISH. 285 

If I were to use flesh in a way which I thought 
to be least injurious, I would select that of wild 
animals, apparendy in full health and vigor, and 
of youthful or middle age, and use it with no con- 
diments or accompaniments, except, perhaps, a 
small quantity of bread and salt, and with as little 
cooking of any kind as possible. I would also 
select the leanest parts. I would allow myself no 
gravies or sauces. It should be eaten at breakfast 
or dinner — never at supper — and breakfast would 
be preferable. I would masticate it as slowly as 
possible, and take little or no drink with my food. 
I would use it but once a day, and even then in 
moderate quantity. 

Fattened animals are usually diseased animals ; 
and I am unwilling to eat diseased food, if I can 
help it. Some fattened animals have Hver disease, 
some fever, and some consumption — at least the 
beginning of it. I have already mentioned the 
case of cows in a state of confinement, as in our 
cities ; and I might relate a thousand facts, had I 
room, to confirm the truth of my statements. 

I would not eat meat which had been long pre- 
served by salt. If I could not get it either fresh 
or dried without smoke or any additions, I would 
not use it. Smoked meat is bad, decidedly so ; 
and so is much salt, long applied — and salt petre. 
Meat pies, of all sorts, are specially unfavorable to 



286 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

health ; and so, in general, are meat soups and 
broths. Like other liquids, the latter are difficult 
of digestion, as I have elsewhere shown. I speak 
of the healthy, of course — for the sick, I am not 
writing. 

The best forms of cooking meat are boiling, 
broiling and roasting. Boiled meat is, perhaps, 
most easy of digestion, but not most nutritive — 
something being probably lost in the process of boil- 
ing. Broiling preserves most of the juices, and being 
performed in the open air, has many advantages. 
The more rare the cooking, in either case, how- 
ever, and the more free from butter, gravies, herbs, 
stuffing, &;c., the better. Let it be the simple 
lean meat, with its natural juices ; and let it be 
cooked just enough for us to relish it — ^but noth- 
ing more. Frying is, of course, of all forms 
of cooking meat, decidedly the worst. 

If this is the simple truth respecting the use 
of animal food, and if these are the laws which 
limit its use, what is to become of our broths, our 
soups, our hash, our pies — even those of Strasburg, 
made of the diseased livers of geese — our bacon 
and eggs, our sausages, our tripe, our turtles, our 
" bird's nest," our shell fish, our locusts, our snakes 
and our snails ? And what, too, is to become of 
the multitude of fishes that inhabit the ocean and 
the rivers ? 



FLESH AND FISH. 287 

In regard to fish, I ought, perhaps, to nave ob- 
served, that these are seldom diseased — and there- 
fore, though they may be somewhat more heating and 
less nutritious than other animals, they are, in some 
respects, preferable. If used, the same principles 
will apply to their use which have already been 
laid down in relation to the flesh of land animals. 

I might relate, here, many anecdotes, well at- 
tested, of disease and death from bad animal food. 
I might relate, from Dr. Chrisiston, stories of poison- 
ing by veal, beef, bacon and sausages. I might 
speak of two hundred and thirty-four cases of 
disease, and one hundred and ten deaths, which, 
between the years 1793 and 1827, occurred in the 
kingdom of Wurtemberg, from eating a kind of 
sausages made of blood and liver. Cases might 
be extracted from the Journal of Health for 1832, 
showing the danger not only of meat, but of meat 
pies. Some of the cases of poisoning from the 
use of meat pies are truly frightful, and might 
deter us, one would think, from venturing upon 
their use. — I might also show, or endeavor to show, 
that much of the disease of every day occurrence 
among us, is produced or aggravated, or both, by 
improper food, and especially by improper animal 
food. But it seems to me unnecessary. 

I will only add a few thoughts on shell fish. 
How strange it is that people in a civilized com- 



288 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

munity will perpetuate, by their example, such an 
uncivilized — I was going to say disgusting — prac- 
tice as that of eating, on all occasions when they 
can get them, oysters, clams, lobsters, Stc. We 
are disgusted with the Arab and the South Sea 
Islander for eating locusts and snails ; yet, in what 
respect is eating whole oysters or clams a whit 
more decent ? They are not, in fact, so good food 
for mankind as the snail, nor so nutritious. I do 
most sincerely hope that no young house-keeper 
who reads this work, and considers what a multi- 
tude of better articles for human sustenance can 
be obtained from the wide range of farinaceous 
vegetables and fruits, will ever lend her aid wil- 
lingly in encouraging among her household this 
outrage upon good sense and decency. 

Oysters and clams are scattered along our 
coasts — usually in the neighborhood of some mis- 
erably barren soil. Perhaps they are in part 
designed to afford a temporary sustenance to the 
miserable mariner who has been wrecked, where 
there is nothing better for his support ; and to him 
they may afford a tolerable. nourishment till he can 
get something better. Nearly the same remark 
would be applicable, I think, to the use of the 
tortoise, the frog, and several other animals, both 
of the sea and of the land. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 



SUMMARY OF LEADING PRINCIPLES. 

Simplicity in diet. Penalties of neglecting it. Importance 
of mastication. Temperature of food should be low. Why 
it should be so. Why purely nutritious substances should 
not be used. Why solid food is preferable to liquid. 
' Drinks in general. Our meals should be regular. Proper 
hours of eating. Number of meals a day. Rules for the 
proper combination of several articles of food at a meal. 
Regard to the season of the year, hour of the day, and 
time of the week. Regard to our employment. Regard 
to age. 

The preceding chapters, if carefully studied, 
contain, at least by inference, nearly if not quite 
all of what I deem the essential principles of 
rational and scientific dietetics, together with the 
more important rules of cookery. Still, it may 
not be amiss to present some of the most impor- 
tant of them in a more connected as well as a 
more condensed form. 

1. The first rule in regard to food is, to observe 

simplicity. I have often heard people say, in 

relation to diet. Well, after all, the great error is in 

eating too much. And there is much truth in the 

19 



290 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

remark. If error in quality slays its thousands, error 
in quantity slays its ten thousands. And though 
there may be a few who go to the extreme of eating 
too little — an evil of at least equal magnitude with 
the former, wherever it exists — ^}'et cases of this 
sort are believed to be very few indeed. The great 
dietetic error, in this country at least, is excessive 
alimentation. 

Multitudes, in this country of abundance, are 
trained from their veriest infancy to eat three or 
four times as much as they ought. Probably the 
estimate of many intelligent writers, that we eat 
upon an average, about twice as much as the gene- 
ral condition of the system demands, is a safe and 
correct one. People seem to go upon the principle 
of eating as much as they can and not immediately 
get sick. I say immediately ; for as to the after 
consequences, few seem to care or inquire. Where- 
as the only safe rule for any individual in health is, 
to eat as little as he possibly can, and yet sustain, 
in the best condition, all the powers, functions and 
faculties of his system. Four or five pounds of 
solid food, such as bread, puddings, potatoes, beans, 
peas, &ic., are consumed in a day by hundreds of 
hard-laboring individuals, besides a large amount of 
apples, and cider, and beer, and some tea, coffee, 
and fruits. Nay, we may find — without going to 
Siberia — many young men of sixteen, eighteen or 



SUMMARY OF LEADING PRINCIPLES. 291 

twenty years of age, among our hills and moun- 
tains, who will consume their twelve or fifteen 
pounds of food daily, including milk, apples, he, 
nor dream of danger till they chance, some five, ten 
or fifteen years afterwards, to be sick ; and even 
then, neither their friends nor themselves — perhaps 
not the doctor himself — ever dream that the dis- 
ease was produced or aggravated, as one leading 
cause, by excessive alimentation. 

But although this is a common dietetic sin, it will 
never, in my view, be cured or prevented, till peo- 
ple come to habits of simplicity. It is in vain to 
tell of the evils, dreadful as they are to soul and 
body, from over-eating, so long as the custom pre- 
vails of placing in their way, to tempt them, three 
or four times a day, a dozen, or twenty, or thirty 
high-seasoned and highly stimulating dishes. 

I grant indeed that some will eat to excess, even 
of a single article, as bread, or beans, or potatoes. 
But who are they that do this ? Are they those 
who were brought up temperately and simply ? Sel- 
dom, I believe, if ever. All the gormandizers on 
a single dish plainly cooked, I have ever met with, 
had been first trained to distend their stomachs enor- 
mously ; and that, too, with stimulating food. When 
such persons first break off, in regard to quantity, 
especially if what they retain is of a mild, bland na- 
ture, they feel as if they had taken almost nothing 



292 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

at all. But train children to proper qualities of 
food, and they will not so often err as to quantity. I 
have seen the experiment so effectually made, that 
I speak on this point with certainty and decision. 

Let our training be as favorable, however, as it 
may have been, and let the day of reformation be 
deferred to the latest possible period of life, still 
simplicity will be safest. If we are not safe at a 
simple table, we shall not surely be so elsewhere. 
Those who are on their guard will more readily per- 
ceive what a large amount they consume, when 
they eat wholly from one dish, than when they 
make their meal from half a dozen or a dozen dif- 
ferent ones. 

I do not undertake to say with precision what 
quantity of food, as the maximum, should be used by 
a healthy adult in a day ; for so various are consti- 
tutions, conditions, employments, habits, &c., that 
it would be impossible. If, however, we place it 
as high as a pound and eight ounces of solid food — 
and I presume no inteUigent dietetic writer will 
allow more — and if all above that quantity is in 
excess and is slowly producing disease, what a mass 
of error there is among us ! By solid food, however, 
I here mean bread, rice, beans, peas, corn, he. — ^ 
substances which contain from eighty to one hun- 
dred per cent of pure nutriment. For if a pound 
and eight ounces of these be the standard, than we 



SUMMARY OF LEADING PRINCIPLES. 293 

may eat some three or four pounds, in twenty-four 
hours, of apples, potatoes, turnips, beets, he, and 
perhaps from three to four pounds of plainly cooked 
lean meat. 

I would not set people to weighing their food 
with too much exactness, lest I should promote the 
very evils I wish to avoid and remove. Nor would 
it be so necessary, if each one would make a few 
experiments in weighing some of his more common 
articles of diet, and having found out what a very 
small quantity it takes to make a pound, learns to 
confine himself chiefly to a single dish at the same 
meal, and to measure out with his eye, the appro- 
priate quantity — and withal never to violate the 
monitions of conscience. 

2. Another great principle in dietetics is, to 
masticate our food well. This is indispensable, 
not only to the highest gustatory enjoyment, but to 
the most healthy digestion. Nay, it is indispensa- 
ble to the well being of the teeth, the salivary 
glands, the gastric secretion, and the whole system. 
It is not enough insisted on by writers on this sub- 
ject, and in the practical world almost wholly over- 
looked. It could scarcely be more neglected if 
the universal end and aim were to neglect it as 
much as possible. But the penalty is as universal 
as the disobedience ; and is experienced in a bad 
state of the stomach, unhealthy sympathies of the 



294 THE rOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

system with the stomach, especially an unhealthy 
state of the skin and bowels, and foul and early 
decaying teeth. 

3. Food should not be of a high temperature. 
I will not say, indeed, that it should be as cold as 
ice ; but it should be cool. The system has the 
power of generating heat for itself; and it not only 
has this power, but its well being requires that our 
heat should be thus generated. All unnecessary 
heat, applied either externally or internally, dimin- 
ishes the powers of the system to accomplish this 
'work, and is hence injurious. What would be the 
effect of living constantly immersed in an atmos- 
phere of the temperature of 90 or 100'^ of 
Fahrenheit ? Who does not know that it weakens 
us to remain long in a temperature above 60 or 
70° ; and that in fact the lower the temperature, 
provided we are quite comfortable under it, the 
better for the lungs, the skin, and the whole sys- 
tem. Now the same remark would be applicable 
to the substances, whether liquid or fluid, received 
into the stomach. Above 60 or 70^, they are, as 
a general rule, more or less injurious ; and they 
would probably be better at a much lower tem- 
perature still ; for the stomach is not so well able 
to resist heat by evaporation as the skin, or even 
as the lungs. What, then, must be the effect of 
hot tea, hot coffee, hot soups, hot bread, &;c. ? 



SUMMARY OF LEADING PRINCIPLES. 295 

4. Food ought not to be too nutritious. This 
doctrine might be inferred from analogy. Domestic 
animals, the horse for example, is known to suffer 
soon on a diet too nutritious — hence the necessity 
of mixing hay, potatoes, or even straw, with his 
grain. Nay, it is said, that when his health has 
been failing from confinement to grain, a mixture 
of thin shavings of wood has sometimes restored 
him to sound health. 

But what is true of the horse and other domestic 
animals, is equally true of man. He will soon fall 
off, and finally sicken, on purely nutritious sub- 
stances. His diet should always contain a propor- 
tion of innutritious matter. Thus wheat, rye, corn, 
&C.5 are best unbolted ; and wheat meal, if bolted 
and used to the exclusion of everything else, soon 
produces injury. On the same principle, in part, 
should we use not only the farinaceous articles, but 
fruits and esculent roots ; and the simpler they are 
prepared the better. I would also, both on this 
principle and those which precede it, avoid butter 
and oil of every description, cheese, eggs, and 
pastry. There are many doubts in regard to the 
long continued exclusive use of arrow-root, cas- 
savi flour, tapioca, sago, &z;c., and even rice. If 
these substances are used for an occasional meal, 
they should, all of them, except rice, be alternated 
with those of a contrary character. 



296 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

5. Solid food is generally preferable to that 
which ^s liquid. If there be an exception, it is 
in favor of milk. But this, in any considerable 
quantity, except to children and to those older 
persons who are predisposed to certain forms of 
disease, is believed to be inferior in point of health- 
fulness to that which is more solid. Soups and 
porridge, however, are more decidedly objection- 
able ; and so are gravies, jellies, toasts, &tc. Pud- 
dings, rice, hommony, mush, &c., though less 
solid than bread, may be greatly improved by using 
them when they are several days old. In these 
circumstances they become much more solid than 
when hot. 

This rule would seem also to prohibit the use 
of molasses, honey, sugar, &,c. These, however, 
are not only liquid, but some of them are too con- 
centrated. Eaten in any considerable quantity, 
they are quite objectionable ; and most of them 
ought to be avoided in every quantity, by those 
who would enjoy the highest health. 

The truth is, that our food should furnish a 
large proportion of the liquids our systems need ; 
and if it is of a proper quality and in proper 
quantity, it will do so. Almost everything we eat 
— fruit and roots especially — abounds with water ; 
and even the driest bread is not destitute of it. 
But what is not supplied in this way, should be made 



SUMMARY OF LEADING PRINCIPLES. 297 

up in nature's own way, by the saliva, the gastric 
juice, the bile, and the pancreatic fluid. 

But there is another important reason why solid 
substances are better, as food, than hquids. The 
latter — ^so much of them at least as is merely 
water — ^never undergo the process of digestion. 
They are absorbed, after their arrival in the sto- 
mach, instead of forming chyme, or chyle, or 
blood. The absorbent vessels take up the liquids 
of the stomach, whether received in the food or in 
-the way of, drink, until the mass is of a suitable 
consistence ; after which, the work of digestion 
proceeds. 

When we swallow bread and milk — 1 speak 
now of adults and not of infants — or broth, or 
gruel, or chocolate, or coffee, or tea, the first thing 
is for the absorbents of the stomach to take up the 
water which they contain ; and as they are nearly 
all water, this requires a considerable time. When 
the process is over, what remains but a sediment, 
not only unmasticated and without being subjected 
to the action of the salivary glands, but consisting 
of too highly concentrated nutriment ? The sedi- 
ment of the broth, and the milk and sugar of the 
tea and coffee, are by no means in so good a con- 
dition to be digested properly, as if they were 
mixed with more innutritions matter, and properly 
masticated and insalivated. 



298 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Hence may be seen some of the principal objec- 
tions to coffee, tea, chocolate, fee, whether with 
our meals or without them. It is true, that the 
coflee and tea contain a poison, but it is in small 
quantity. They are also usually taken hot ; but 
this is only one evil. They also add to the variety 
— almost always sufSciently large without them — 
of a single meal, which is a matter worth consider- 
ing. But when to all these evils, we add those 
which were mentioned in a preceding paragraph, 
surely the evidence is sufficiently strong against 
them to lead to their rejection from the rational 
tables of all rational house-keepers. 

Their use between meals involves another evil 
still. The stomach needs time for rest, as well as 
any other muscular organ. But if we swallow a 
drink between meals when the stomach is just 
ready for rest, which contains nutriment, it sets it 
to work again. No liquid should therefore be 
used between our meals but pure water ; any more 
than in connection with them. 

The remarks connected with our fifth rule super- 
sede the necessity of a separate chapter on drinks. 
It at once sets them all aside, so far as our meals 
and the best purposes of health are concerned. 
Indeed, it seems to me a waste of time and 
strength, in this day of light and intelligence, to 
dwell on that subject. A few thoughts respecting 



SUMMARY OF LEADING PBINCIPLES. 299 

them may naturally arise — indeed, seem almost 
unavoidable — in a future chapter. 

6. Our meals should be as regular as possible. 
Children require food more frequently than adults. 
But both children and adults should have fixed 
hours for their meals as much as possible ; and 
should as seldom as possible depart from them. 
If six, twelve and six are the hours for an adult, 1 
would recommend that they be scrupulously ad- 
hered to ; and if occasional and unforeseen circum- 
stances sometimes prevent our taking a meal at 
the usual hours, it is better to omit taking anything 
at all till the next meal. The omission of one 
meal a day, living as we do in this land of abun- 
dance, would be beneficial rather than injurious ; — I 
now mean one meal in three. This number I 
suppose to be the maximum; and if sedentary 
men prefer to use but two, I have no sort of objec- 
tion. I ought to add, that if we omit a meal, it is 
an error to make up for our abstinence by' eating 
the more freely at the next meal ; for if there be 
any variation, it should be to eat less. 

7. I have said that all our meals should be as 
simple as possible. If, however, there are depar- 
tures from the strict letter of this rule, as I presume 
there will be — if we use several articles of food at 
the same meal, it is desirable that they should 
resemble each other as much as possible. The 



800 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

contrary doctrine has usually been taught, but it is 
believed to be untrue. If good mealy potatoes, 
for example, are to be eaten with something else, 
let it be with beans or peas cooked so as to be 
dr}'' and mealy, rather than with apples or pears, 
or other juicy fruits, and rather than with meat. 
There are one or two exceptions, however, to the 
universality of this rule. If rice or pulse is to be 
a principal article at dinner, I would prefer, the 
combination, with a substance so highly nutri- 
tious, of something which does not contain much 
nutriment, even if its general qualities are some- 
what dissimilar ; as turnips, or potatoes, or apples. 
Again, if one article is very soft, or is liquid, as 
pudding or milk, and we are determined to com- 
bine something or other with it, I would use a hard 
substance, requiring much mastication, as wafers 
made of unfermented meal, bread crusts, &c. 

8. Some regard should be paid to the hour of 
the day, as well as to the season of the year. 
If we ever eat that which is comparatively difficult 
of digestion, it should be when our bodies and 
minds are most vigorous ; as at breakfast or dinner. 
With most persons, perhaps, it should be in the 
morning; Thus if milk or gruel are taken, espe- 
cially by adults, it should be either in the morning 
or at noon ; and I prefer, for most persons, the 
morning. So also is the morning meal the best 



SUMMARY OF LEADING PRINCIPLES. 301 

time for fruits, and for the more crude vegetables, 
the nuts, &;c. In any event, the supper should 
be light, and should consist of substances easy 
of digestion — as a little rice, a piece of coarse 
wafer cake, or a little dry bread. 

In the greatest heat of summer, as well as in 
the extremest cold of winter, particular pains should 
be taken to have our food light and easy of diges- 
tion. If we use anything less digestible, it should 
be either in the autumn, or late in the spring, 
when our labors are neither too violent, too ex- 
hausting, nor too frequently remitted. We also 
require less food towards the end of the week than 
at the beginning, as well as that which is milder. 
The old custom of substituting on Saturday a little 
dried fish for a more full diet, which once prevailed 
in many parts of New England, was therefore 
quite philosophical, to say nothing of its favorable 
tendency in regard to the duties of the Sabbath. 

9. In deciding on the quality and quantity of 
our food in general, regard should be had to 
the nature of our employment. Both he who 
uses too much and he who uses too little exercise 
of body and mind, should eat less, and of that 
which is milder in its nature. It is he who labors, 
thinks, recreates himself, and sleeps in the most 
just proportion, who can eat the most food, as well, 
as that which is strongest. By the strongest food, 



302 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

I here mean bread, rice, beans, peas, potatoes, 
&c. It is these — and not animal food — that hold 
out longest with the laborer, especially when he 
has been trained to their use, or has duly refonned 
his habits, as the experience of hundreds of mil- 
lions could testify. The mass of the hard laborers — 
the bone and sinew of the world — have in all ages 
to the present hour, been fed principally and often 
exclusirely on this class of aliments. Females 
require food which is less stimulating than males. 

10. Regard should also be paid to age. Chil- 
dren need food which is rather more active than that 
of adults. On this point, however, I would speak 
with diffidence. Nature seems to have provided 
for the tender infant a food, which, in the process 
of digestion, creates a good deal of heat ; and yet 
the more intelligent of physicians recommend that 
it should be weaned to mild vegetable food. ' I am 
inclined to think this is the order of nature ; and 
that the physicians are right. Many of them, 
however, recommend a mixture of animal with the 
vegetable food, sometime afterward — ^but without 
agreeing among themselves when the change shall 
commence. It seems to me that either the child 
should not be habituated to vegetable food after 
weaning, or else, if the habit is once formed, it 
should not be broken up. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 



COOKERY, AS IT IS. 

Present object of Cookery. What its object should be. Ex- 
ample of abuse. Error of eating hot food. Condiments 
and accompaniments of food. Another example of abuse 
in cookery. Another, still. Objections to cool food an- 
swered. A laughable sight. Gustatory pleasure perfectly 
lawful. Who best secure it. A great but common mis- 
take. Losses sustained by those who have fashionable 
appetites. An anecdote of a country table. Usual views 
and feelings of house-keepers about plain meals. " Trim- 
mings " of our meals. Woman too much a slave to fashion. 
Cooking not her main object. What she should glory in, 
if she glories at all. 

The two great purposes of all cookery should be 
to improve the quality of food, and increase its 
quantity. Sometimes both these ends can be se- 
cured at the same time ; but it too often happens, 
as the fashions of cookery now are, that we accom- 
plish neither. Indeed, as a more general rule, the 
quality of substances submitted to the cook is de- 
teriorated, and the quantity actually diminished. 

In short, if it were the universal object of all 
house-keepers, so far at least as food and cookery 



304 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

are concerned — and this, now-a-days, forms a very 
considerable part of the business of the housewife, 
since it occupies, in one way or another, most of 
her time and thoughts — to defeat, at every step 
they take, and every process in which they engage, 
the real purposes for which food and cookery are 
designed, it is scarcely possible for me to conceive 
how they could better accomplish it, than by the 
course which is current among us. 

Take the article of flour, for example, as it is 
received by the house-keeper ; that is, in as fine a 
state as it can be — for if it were not so, it would 
scratch some delicate throat ! If it is wheat flour, 
instead of making good, sweet, plain cakes or 
loaves of it, the house-keeper who has time enough 
for the purpose, immediately converts it into hot 
biscuits, or hot rolls, or waffles, or compound cakes, 
or dishes of some sort or other. 

I do not say that wheat is improved in passing 
from a coarser state to that of superfine flour , 
quite the contrary. But we will suppose, for the 
present, that this is a matter beyond the house- 
keeper's control. We will suppose her duty is to 
increase the quantity or improve the quaUty of the 
article as it comes to her hands. 

Two hundred pounds of superfine wheat flour 
will make about two hundred and seventy pounds 
of wheat bread. The increase of weight is chiefly 



AS IT IS. 305 

by means of the water which is taken up, a part 
of which, as some think, is rendered sohd in the 
loaf, as it is in the mass of lime to which it is 
applied in slacking., Let this be as it may, there 
is little doubt, in my own mind, that the changes 
are in favor, greatly so, of nutrition. I believe 
two hundred and seventy pounds of bread will go 
very much farther in sustaining human life — nay, 
and sustain it twice as well — than two hundred 
pounds of flour from which it is made would do, 
even if its taste, &c., were equally agreeable. 
The nature of the chanares — so favorable — which 
take place in kneading and baking, I do not pre- 
tend to understand ; but their existence is beyond 
all dispute. 

I believe, moreover, that the change is nearly as 
great and as favorable in the formation of bread, 
plain puddings and unleavened cakes, from coarse 
meal as from fine flour ; and from the meal of other 
grains as well as wheat. Thus far, then, cookery, 
whether modern or ancient, might seem to be a 
blessing and not a curse to mankind. 

But when people will not eat these things, after 
the cook has prepared them, unless they are hot 
from the oven or stove, or full of pearlash, salera- 
tus, or lime, or soaked in butter, or toasted and 
then buttered ; and whenever the cook herself con- 
tributes all she can to promote such a belief, and 
20 



306 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

thinks a plain raised loaf, or an unleavened cake, 
of wheat, rye or Indian, or a plain pudding, is 
unfit, after it is cooled to the temperature of the 
surrounding atmosphere, for anything but swine, 
who does not begin to doubt the usefulness of the 
art of cookery as it now is ? 

When, however, we go still farther, and to our 
meal, and yeast, and pearlash, and artificial heat, 
and butter, add molasses, or sugar, or eggs, or 
wine, or spices, or fruits — or all of these and many 
more things — and when it comes to pass that fashion 
will not admit of a plain rice cake, or the plainest 
dish of any sort, without its being tinctured with 
flour, butter and eggs, a most unnatural trio, what 
are we to say ? Does female labor, thus expended, 
tend to increase the quantity and improve the 
quality of our nutriment ? 

Again, take milk. Now if the cook or the 
dairy woman can either improve its quality or 
increase its quantity by her labors on it, I have not 
a word to say. But is she doing this vvhen she 
spends her days and weeks, and I might say 
months, in changing it into butter and cheese — 
which, to say the least, are less wholesome than 
the milk is — and in preparing which, instead of 
gaining in nutriment, we actually lose ? 

Let me not be told of the difficulty of preserv- 
ing milk, especially in warm weather, without 



COOKERY, AS IT IS. S^ 

changing it into butter or cheese ; or of the pleas- 
ant variety which these afford in our bills of fare. 
We are not obliged to keep so many cows ; since, 
on ray principles, the more we keep the more evil 
is produced by it. And as to the variety of food, 
we have variety enough of simple things, (as I 
trust has been already seen in the chapters on 
food,) without forming doubtful compounds. 

Once more. To boil, steam, roast or bake a 
potatoe, is a useful process. If it does not increase 
the quantity of the nutriment, it certainly improves 
its quality. But how few house-keepers stop here ! 
Salt must certainly be added, and probably butter. 
Nay, this is but common-place ; and does not bring 
into view the skill of the cook at all. By no means. 
A simple boiled potatoe is surely unfit to be eaten ; 
and to eat a cold potatoe — one I mean which is not 
smoking — would be horrid. How heavy it would 
lie on the stomach ! And does not this prove it to 
be unwholesome ? Yes, just as much as the fact 
that simple cool water is at first too heavy for the 
stomachs of those who have been accustomed 
twenty, thirty, or fifty years to hot tea or coffee, or 
to cider, beer, or spirits, proves that cool water 
is unwholesome. And when house-keepers can 
prove cold potatoes to be, in their nature, un- 
wholesome, I will be ready to prove that cold water 
is so. 



308 THE TOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

But who could eat things which are not smok- 
ing ? say some. I have even heard sensible peo- 
ple say they preferred going without their dinner, 
to eating it cold, especially the vegetables. Now 
there is not one of the latter — the potatoe itself not 
excepted — which to an unperverted taste would not 
be preferred when cold. Remember, I say once 
more, I do not mean as cold as ice ; that would be 
the other extreme ; — but I mean the temperature of 
the surrounding atmosphere. 

Is it asked again, what evidence there is that 
vegetables could ever be relished when cold ? I 
answer by asking what evidence there is that they 
would 7iot be ? Besides, the farmer in the interior 
of New England often makes his supper chiefly of 
cold potatoes and turnips ; and he eats heartily, and 
enjoys his meal, too. Is here no evidence ? 

But we cannot eat so freely when food is cold as 
when it is hot, it will be said. I know this, very 
well. People cannot eat so much of a thing which 
is cool, as of that which is smoking. They cannot 
eat so much bread, so much meat, so much pud- 
ding, so many potatoes, so many cakes ! They 
must eat a pound of hot bread, a pound of pud- 
ding, a pound of johnny cake or buckwheat cakes, 
or two or three pounds of potatoes or hot baked 
apples, when half the quantity, or at most two 
thirds, if cool, would satisfy their appetites (at least 



COOKERY, AS IT IS. 309 

if unperverted) far better, and be a thousand times 
better for their health, to say nothing, for the pres- 
ent, of other advantages which would result from a 
little self-denial and retrenchment. 

It is enough to make one smile, to hear people 
say they are fond of bread, or potatoes, or rice, or 
boiled puddings, or Indian or buckwheat cakes, 
and yet if presented by the house-keeper with either 
of these, twelve hours after it is cooked, and with- 
out some accompaniment err other, to see them 
stare. Eat such fare as this ? they seem to say. 
And yet they talk about being fond of the very 
things which are set before them 1 

But is not the taste to be gratified at all ? I shall 
probably be asked. Certainly it is. I go for the 
greatest degree of palate gratification. But who 
has it ? Is it he who cannot eat his meal — who 
finds himself thrown out of his element, and misera- 
ble — because one of a dozen of the articles on the 
table happens not to be hot, or happens not to be 
seasoned to his liking ? Or is it he who finds all 
things sweet ; who can make his meal and enjoy 
it with the highest zest whether cold or hot, and 
whether it consist of one article or a dozen, and 
whether or not there is a single accompaniment to 
his simple dishes — even common salt ; who can- 
not, in one word, be " put out," but who can eat 
and relish all things ? 



310 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that those who 
eat simple things do not enjoy so much gustatory 
pleasure as those who eat compounds, and espe- 
cially sweet and high-seasoned dishes. The reverse 
were far more true. The long use of compound 
and high-seasoned dishes, ruins our taste and our 
smell. I have seen people of fifty years of age, to 
whom almost everything was inodorous and insipid. 
And there is a tendency to this state of things in 
every eater of compound or high-seasoned dishes, 
as well as in every one who indulges in a large 
variety, even of simple things, at the same meal. 
How can it — how should it be otherwise ? All things 
must have a salt taste — here is perpetual monot- 
ony. All things must be buttered or shortened — 
here again is monotony. All tilings must be hot 
with pepper — soaked or mashed — hot from the 
oven or pan — semi-liquid, &z;c. — what is there in all 
this but monotony, taking the month or the year 
together, although there is variety at the same 
meal. But this monotony and this stimulus of high 
seasoning soon wear out the taste ; and when once 
worn out, it cannot be restored. 

I know, full well, that high-seasoned dishes give 
more gustatory pleasure than plain dishes, at first ; 
but the keenness of our relish for them finally wears 
out. But then the great difficulty soon is, not only 
that we cannot enjoy what is not high-seasoned, but 



COOKERY, AS IT IS. 311 

also that we cannot enjoy a thing which, is not sea- 
soned in the right manner. And as no house- 
keeper is perfect — as every one is hkely to fail 
occasionally of hitting right, especially in the pre- 
paration of some one dish at a given table of a dozen 
or twenty various articles, even where she knows 
beforehand the tastes of all her household — as this 
is much more likely to happen abroad than at 
home — and as whenever it does happen, the fash- 
ionable eater is at once miserable, can it be doubted 
who is the gainer in the end, in mere gustatory 
pleasure ? 

Nor is this all. To a person who eats of fash- 
ionable dishes and mixtures, there is only a small 
portion of each meal, even at fashionable tables, 
that really delights him. He eats almost every- 
thing in the way of doing penance. Bread he 
must eat, at least a little of it ; but why ? He 
does not relish it. It is a kind of penance to eat 
it. Because it is fashionable to maJce believe we 
eat bread, we therefore taste a litde of it ; but even 
when hot, it is insipid stuff to many. Besides, it 
sometimes comes to the table cold. Potatoes, too, 
even when mashed, buttered and peppered, go 
down with some difficulty. The same may, in 
fact, be said of almost all the dishes. A modern 
epicure is almost always eating the present dish 
as a kind of introduction to something else ; or as 



1 
312 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

a kind of purgatory he must pass through to the 
bliss beyond it. Whereas, the rational eater has 
high gustatory pleasure, in even the simplest dish ; 
and hence is never doing penance or going through 
purgatory, eat what he will which he knows to be 
wholesome. Indeed, to him all things are whole- 
some, as I have already said, when they are the 
best he can get. He enjoys one thing or another. 
And if occasionally a dainty dish comes in his way, 
and it seems necessary for him to partake of it, he 
enjoys that too. He takes care, however, that such 
dishes do not come in his way often ; for he knows 
that if they do, they would soon spoil his appetite 
for plain things. 

The common belief, that those who eat simple 
things and only one thing at a time, have less of 
gustatory enjoyment than others, though utterly 
unfounded, is nevertheless the rock on which thou- 
sands and millions spht. Many a house-keeper 
ruins her own health and the health of her family 
in this vain belief, and in the practice which 
naturally results from it. For though both the 
young and the old house-keeper often take very 
great delight in showing their skill in compound- 
ing and preparing dishes, and in furnishing the 
table, at each meal, with a great variety, yet it is 
not their pride in the matter which alone prompts 
them. They suppose that physical enjoyment is 



COOKERY, AS IT IS. 313 

actually promoted by it ; and if their own is, they 
expect that of their households will be. And 
many pass through life and go down to the grave 
in this deplorable error. Nay, the error gives 
them upon the average six months of disease dur- 
ing the progress of their whole lives, and deprives 
them of from five to twenty years of life. 

I have been at a table provided for only about 
half a dozen persons, most of whom required plain 
food, and all of whom would have been contented 
with two or three sorts, and yet the following was 
the variety : — Bread of unbolted wheat meal, 
Indian bread, wheat flour bread, boiled rice, boiled 
Indian pudding, beans, potatoes, turnips and boiled 
corn. Of these nine sorts, seven were cooked for 
the occasion. 

Now why all this ? Partly from a desire on the 
part of the house-keeper to show her skill ; much 
from mere habit ; but more than all, that there 
might be variety, for variety's sake. The idea 
of sitting down to dinner with nothing on the table 
but an Indian pudding of suhable size for six 
persons, would seem to her monstrous. Or if to a 
large platter of rice, or potatoes, or beans, she 
should add bread also, still it would seem to her as 
if there was nothing at all on the table. And if, 
above all, the rice or the pudding had been boiled 
the day before, and was to be eaten without sauce, 



314 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

sugar, molasses or condiments, she would be unable 
to suppress her feelings. No, indeed ! unless she 
had toiled a whole forenoon to get ready a dinner 
of seven, eight or ten separate and different articles, 
so that every one could taste a little bread, a little 
meat, a little rice or pudding, a potatoe, a turnip, 
and a few beans, with a little salt, vinegar, mo- 
lasses, cream or sauce, and unless all were blazing 
hot, she would be miserable, and think those at her 
table so. 

I know there are many things which consume 
the time of a house-keeper besides mere cookery ; 
but I also know that, as things are, the latter 
comies in for a very large share of her efforts and 
strength. It is no light task to prepare hot water 
and make tea or coffee, twice or three tiniBs a 
day ; to heat one's self over the fire, the stove or 
'the oven, two or three times a day ; to prepare 
several hot dishes for every meal ; and to make 
ready the sauces, gravies, and other accompani- 
ments for each meal. Nor is it a small matter to 
wash a host of plates, and platters, and tea cups, 
and coffee bowls, and tumblers, and knives, and 
forks, and spoons, three or four times a day. 

I verily believe that it is the trimmings of our 
meals — the non-essentials rather than the essen- 
tials — that consume the great bulk of the time 
of our females. Cooking there must indeed be ; 



COOKERY, AS IT IS. 315 

boiling, baking, stewing, roasting, &c. — but tbese 
processes, as I shall endeavor to show in another 
chapter, need not be so conducted as to absorb all 
our time. There is no more need of cooking 
everything new for each meal, than there is of 
washing clothes every day ; not a whit. Nor is 
there any necessity for having half a dozen courses 
of food at the same meal. One course is enough, 
and one cooked dish is enough — for prince or 
peasant — at one meal. The preparation of meat, 
and potatoes, and turnips, and pudding, and pie, 
and fruits, to succeed each other as so many differ- 
ent courses, with their accompaniments — pickles, 
sauces, gravies, &;c. — 'to say nothing of any hot 
drinks to accompany them, is a species of tyranny 
imposed by fashion, to which no house-keeper 
ought ever to be compelled to submit. It may 
be difficult for her to oppose the current ; but it is 
for her life and the life of her husband and chil- 
dren to do so. 

I tremble when I think how woman's time — 
one of the most precious of the gifts of God — is 
frittered away in pampering the wants and admin- 
istering to the pleasures of the mere physical 
nature of man. She must toil twelve, fifteen or 
eighteen hours a day in attending to his apart- 
ments, his clothes, his stomach, &c., and wear 
herself out in this way, and leave the marks 



316 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

of this wear and tear in the constitutions of her 
children ; and to her daughters the same legacy 
which she herself received from her mother — the 
permission to wear herself out prematurely in the 
same manner — while the immortal minds and 
hearts of her children, and husband, and domes- 
tics — ^if domestics she has — must be neglected ! 

Nobody doubts that the mind is of more value 
than the body — infinitely so ; and few reject the 
proposition, in the abstract, that woman is the 
divinely appointed teacher of man ; and yet where 
is the person to be found, who labors, in any con- 
siderable degree, to make her so ? Where is the 
person, indeed, who does not, by indulging the 
demands ai a pampered appetite, contribute daily 
and hourly to rivet the chains of her slavery ? 

And the worst of all is — I repeat the senti- 
ment — woman neither knows nor feels her degra- 
dation. Nay, she often glories in it. This, is, in 
fact, the worst feature of slavery ; it obliterates the 
very relish of liberty, and makes the slave em- 
brace her chains. Especially is this so with the 
slavery of our lusts, and passions, and propensities, 
and appetites. Woman not only toils on, the 
willing slave of an arbitrary fashion that demands 
of her to surrender her whole nature — bodily, 
mental and moral — to the din of plates, and pots, 
and kettles, but she is often proud of these employ- 



COOKERY, Ag IT IS. 317 

ments, and seeks her reputation in them. She 
vainly seems to suppose that to prepare fashionable 
compounds in the most fashionable style, and to 
set an immense variety of her fashionable com- 
pounds on the same table, is to act up to the 
highest dignity of her nature. I do not mean that 
she ever asserts this, in so many words ; but she 
does so in her actions — and actions, according to 
the old maxim, speak much louder than words. 
Whereas the truth is, that while the bodies of 
those whom she educates — for educate her house- 
hold she does inevitably, whether it be well or ill — 
should not be neglected, their morals and souls 
should receive a large share of her attention ; and 
in this, if in anything, should she principally glory. 
She should be infinitely prouder of eliciting a good, 
and enlarged, and noble thought, and a wai'm, and 
benevolent, and pious sentiment, than of making a 
mince pie with eighteen different ingredients in it, 
or of setting a table with forty -five various com- 
pound dishes upon it. 

If this book should fall into the hands of one 
person who beheves there is more of truth than dec- 
lamation in the foregoing sentiments, let me prevail 
with her when I urge her to read, and consider, 
and study the chapters which follow. 

On this subject, I may be thought tedious ; 
especially as I have dwelt upon it, at considerable 



318 THE YOTJNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

fength in the first chapter. But it is, in my view, 
a matter of very great moment. If, says Mr. 
Fhnt, in the Western Review, this world is ever 
to be made better and happier, woman is to be a 
principal agent in the great work. But what can 
she do as things now are ? Is she not completely 
enslaved — voluntary, though her slavery may be-;- 
to the never ending din of pots and kettles ? 



CHAPTER XLV. 



COOKERY, AS IT SHOULD BE. 

" Pulling down " and building up. Popular complaints 
against dietetic writers. Examples of telling what people 
should do. Boiling corn. Why cool food is better than 

' hot. Objections to cooking in large quantities at once. 
Directions on the subject. Rice, beans and peas. Pota- 
toes. Cooking economically. Employing children in 
domestic concerns. Its advantages. Intentions of Provi- 
dence in this matter. Objections considered. Why daugh- 
ters hate domestic concerns. Proposed remedy. Oral 
instruction by mothers who are house-keepers. Modified 
plans. Rational cooking a simple and easy concern. 
Three fourths of the time now spent in it wasted. 

It is sometimes said of those who would reform 
the customs of society, that they spend too large a 
proportion of their time in telling what is wrong, 
and too small a proportion of it in telhng what is 
right and proper ; that they are, in short, more 
ready and more anxious to pull down, than to 
build up. 

How just this charge may be, I will not pretend 
to say ; though it probably contains some truth. 
And yet it often happens, that in speaking of what 



320 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

is wrong in human society, we do, almost of neces- 
sity, allude to the right. T[ie complaint that no 
food or drink is fashionable now-a-days which is 
not hot, implies and more than implies that he who 
makes it, believes cool things are preferable. 

But since some people are anxious and even clam- 
orous — especially on the subject of diet and cook- 
ery — to know what they should rather than what 
they should not do, being either too busy or too 
lazy to study the matter for themselves, and see 
whether or not our complaints are well founded, I 
will proceed to furnish a chapter which I trust 
will be, in this respect, in accordance with their 
wishes. I do not mean that I am going to give 
them advice which they will be likely to follow 
implicitly, for if there should be one house-keeper 
in ten who should not fly into a passion with some 
of my doctrines, I may think myself fortunate. I 
only mean that I am ready to present one chapter 
which may be sufficiently dictatorial and dogmati- 
cal to meet the wishes of those who swallow so 
eagerly the opinions of others, and who use least 
the faculties of comparing, reflecting, and judging 
for themselves which the great Creator has given 
them. 

I have shown, or at least endeavored to show, 
that corn, for example, properly boiled, is one of 
the best articles of human sustenance. Now if I 



COOKERY, AS IT SHOULD BE. 321 

have been so successful as to make any house- 
keeper believe this — if she has gained by my re- 
marks any strength to overcome the belief that 
boiled corn is a vulgar dish, fit only for cattle and 
swine, but degrading to the human animal — I am 
now ready to give some general directions as to 
the manner of preparing it. 

Let it be prepared, then, as hommony is by our 
southern brethren, in very large quantity. Instead 
of boiling a quart, or two quarts, let the house- 
keeper boil a peck at least ; or if her household is 
large and her culinar)'' vessels large, and if the 
weather is not hot, she may boil half a bushel. It 
is little more labor to boil sixteen quarts than two. 
But if not. then it is almost eight times as much 
labor to boil sixteen quarts in little parcels of only 
two quarts each, as to boil it all at once. And 
in this way, would not seven eighths, or nearly 
seven eighths, of the time and labor be saved ? It 
must be so. 

Do not tell me of the labor of warming it over 
after it is cold ; for she who is disposed to urge a 
plea hke this, is not prepared to read this chapter. 
Cold, or rather cool food, is not only better, but 
even more agreeable to the pure taste, than that 
which is hot. Just as much so, and for nearly the 
same reasons, as cool air is better and more agree- 
able to the lungs than air heated to 98^. And I 
21 



322 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

regard it, by the way, just as necessary to the best 
heahh that food for the heahhy should go into the 
stomach at a temperature considerably lower than 
the temperature of that stomach, as it is that air 
should go into the lungs of a lower temperature 
than that of the blood, which is about 98°. True, 
people may live, and do live, in very hot regions ; 
but nobody can be very long-lived, or very healthy 
or happy while life lasts, in a country where the 
temperature is always up to 98"^, or even not so 
considerably below it as to give them the sensation 
of coolness ; neither can the highest health and 
longevity be promoted by food and drink whose 
temperature is not considerably lower than that of 
the stomach. But I have spoken of this before. 

Do not say food will spoil in so large a mass ; 
for you need not keep it in a large mass. It may 
be spread a little, or at least kept in two or more 
parcels. But it need not be kept long. A large 
family — and it is only for a very large family and 
in cold weather, that I would cook such a quan- 
tity — making their meals of nothing but boiled 
corn twice a day — for I would have it constitute 
the whole of two meals in three every day, 
for a day or two after it is first cooked — would 
soon consume half a bushel. A family of eight 
persons only, three adults and five children and 
youth — and this is not a very large family — ^would 



COOKERY, AS IT SHOULD BE. 323 

consume about three pints of it at a meal ; per- 
haps two quarts. Older children eat almost as 
much food as adults. But at the rate of three or 
four quarts a day, the quantity I have mentioned 
would only last four or five days. If such solid 
and highly nutritious food is used for two meals 
of each day, for four or five days, the third meal 
of each day might and should be lighter — as sweet 
apples, or other good, wholesome fruits, or turnips, 
or beets, or potatoes : — or perhaps raspberries for 
to-day, strawberries for to-morrow, and apples, or 
potatoes, or beets for the next day. Now in this 
way how small is the amount of cookery required 
for sustaining hfe and health in the best condition, 
and securing at the same time a full amount of 
gustatory enjoyment ? 

If rice is to be prepared, boiled or baked — if 
beans or peas — if hommony or hasty pudding — if 
meat or fish — if chesnuts or prunes — the same 
general remarks will be applicable which I have 
made in relation to boiled corn. As with corn, so 
with each of these, the perfection of their use con- 
sists in making one entire meal — perhaps two — 
each day, of a single article, and this without any 
addition of condiments, sauces or gravies. 

There is a very great difference in articles of 
food, in regard to keeping them uninjured — even 
if equal pains are taken. Some may be kept 



324 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

twice as long as others. Thus bread which is well 
baked, and kept in a dry, pure, airy place, may be 
preserved, sometimes for whole weeks, uninjured— 
and usually a single week ; — and wafer cakes or 
coarse crackers a month or more ; while boiled 
potatoes, or beans, or hasty pudding, will become 
more or less acid in a much shorter time. Still 
they will not spoil near as soon, if cooked as they 
ought to be, as in other circumstances. Thus 
beans, whether boiled or baked, should have no 
butter or any other substance mixed with them, 
except water, and they should be cooked alone. 
There should even be no more water than is abso- 
lutely necessary in order to cook them. And 
when they are cooked sufficiently, the water should 
be evaporated slowly, so as to leave them very 
dry and mealy. They are also better, if while 
they are boiled soft, they remain wholly unbroken. 
And the same remarks which I have made in re- 
gard to beans, are applicable also to peas. Cooked 
in this way — that is, if ripe — they may not only be 
preserved a great deal better, but they are richer, 
and more palatable ; and what is of more conse- 
quence still, they are less liable to produce flatu- 
lence, and are more wholesome. 

Cooked in the best manner, in the spirit of the 
foregoing directions, beans and peas may be pre- 
served — unless the weather is very hot — for at 



325 

least two days ; and in very cool, dry weather, 
and in a proper place, for three days. But if 
baked with meat and other food, or if filled with 
butter and pepper after they are cooked, before 
they are set away, or if left moist and watery, or 
kept in hot or damp rooms, you cannot expect to 
preserve them. 

Potatoes, if mealy and cooked properly, may, as 
I have said elsewhere, be preserved one or two 
days, according to the state of the weather and 
other circumstances. But cooking them is so 
simple a process, that if it were to be done twice a 
day, it could not be tedious. If you use a com- 
mon fire-place, you have only to roast them in the 
ashes, and after brushing them well, let every one 
peel them for himself; if a cooking stove, you can 
bake them with the same or nearly the same facility ; 
and if you are compelled to boil them, it is still no 
great task. You can easily boil half a peck or a 
peck ; and in a large family, and when used as a 
principal article of food for a day or so, they are 
soon consumed. I know a family of six persons, 
three adults and three children, who consume about 
a peck of potatoes daily. 

If the house-keeper and her household can once 
get free from their slavery to hot food, a great 
work is achieved, and a great step made towards 
reform. Then it will not be necessary to cook 



326 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

half a dozen sorts in a hurry, in order to have 
them ready at the very next meal. She can cook 
many things at her leisure, even while pursuing 
other occupations, especially with the aid of her 
children. 

She is washing, for example — and is compelled 
to have a large fire. If it be in a fire-place, she 
can soon give such directions to her children, 
as will enable them, under her eye, to select a 
quantity of potatoes, either large, small or mid- 
dling — ^for their size should be uniform — and rake 
them up properly in the coals and embers ; and if 
a stove is used, with chambers or ovens in it, for 
baking, the process is still more simple. 

I have spoken of cooking on washing days, not 
because it is indispensable, but only for the sake 
of the economy, and to show how simple a thing 
rational cookery is ; and how compatible it is with 
other employments, even those which are usually 
reckoned the least so. For if cooking can be done 
on washing days, under what circumstances may it 
not be done ? 

But there is no necessity of doing it on these 
days, except for economy's sake. Suppose the 
washing day, as is usual, to be Monday ; it is easy 
to have on hand good bread enough of several 
kinds, good corn, good rice, good hommony, good 
beans, or good apples. None of these articles, 



COOKERY, AS IT SHOULD BE. 327 

properly prepared on Saturday, or even on Friday, 
will spoil by Monday, in any ordinary circum- 
stances : — so that no family would suffer, if the 
whole day were devoted to washing, and no new 
article for the table were prepared. 

I have alluded to the ease with which some 
kinds of cookery can go on at the same time with 
other employments, even with washing. But it is 
still more compatible with ironing, sewing, knitting, 
mending, instructing children, &;c. Suppose it is 
desired by the housewife, to prepare a quantity of 
Indian cakes — johnny cakes, so called. Suppose, 
too — for this is a pre-requisite — the family to be 
no longer slaves to hot food. The cakes are 
wanted, not merely for the next meal, but to form 
three or four of the next eight or nine meals of 
the family. How simple the process ! The house- 
keeper has but to wet and properly mix and pre- 
pare the mass of Indian meal, and mould it into 
the proper or usual shapes. The son or daughter 
can place the cakes at the fire, attend them, and 
remove them when thev are done. I am not \^- 
norant that their assistance will at first cost about 
as much, in direction and oversight, as it is worth ; 
but it will not be so long;. Girls will soon learn 
so much of simple cookery as to render their aid 
exceedingly valuable ; nor are all boys slow in ac- 
quiring the same kind of knowledge. 



328 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

The idea of requiring boys to assist the mother, 
in this way, may strike some, at first view, as a 
Httle heterodox, or at least fanciful ; but I do not 
so regard it. Such a practice is by no means un- 
common in country places. I have known many 
boys, in large families, where there were few if any 
daughters, who, at ten or twel ve, or fourteen years 
of age, could do nearly every kind of housework — 
washing and baking not always excepted — ^with as 
much neatness, facility and correctness as girls of 
the same age ; and I have never known a young 
man of this description who did not, in after life, 
consider this knowledge as quite a valuable acqui- 
sition. 

How many are the advantages of such a cus- 
tom ! Not every family has girls in it. Some- 
times, too, the boys are the oldest. And even 
when there are girls in the family, the labors of 
both girls and boys may often be needed. How 
many a lad, by being employed in this way, under 
the eye of his mother — ^God's viceroy and his own 
natural educator and instructor — would be kept not 
only from idleness, but from the terrible conse- 
quences, of idleness — vice, and crime, and punish- 
ment ! 

I do not mean to say that all boys should be 
employed in this manner, at all times. Of course 
they often have other labors or employments a&- 



COOKERY, AS IT SHOULD BE. 329 

signed them by the mutual consent of the parents. 
But what I would aim at, in these remarks, is, to 
remove from the minds of mothers — and if possible, 
fathers, too — any lingering doubts which may remain 
in regard to the propriety of thus employing this 
part of their household. 

If it is said that boys will think the employments 
to which 1 refer, improper for them, or even degrad- 
ing, I reply, that they will never think so — -at least 
I have never known them to appear to think so — 
till they learn it from the public sentiment, either 
in doors or out. Now as to the public sentiment 
of the household, it is one of my objects in WTiting 
these paragraphs, to set that right ; but where 
that is right, a wrong sentiment out of doors, will, 
for some time at least, have but little influence. 

If it is said that such employments will be irk- 
some to boys, who are naturally disposed to be 
more active and less sedentary, I reply, that they 
are no doubt improper to be followed steadily ; nor 
is it necessary. This is not what I would incul- 
cate or defend. A small part of their time, a small 
number of hours thus spent, each day, would be 
■invaluable to a mother who had no other help, or 
even to one who had. For to own the whole truth, 
I would have all boys employed more or less in this 
way while young, let the circumstances of the fam- 
ily be what they may. 



330 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

I have sometimes inclined strongly to the opin- 
ion, that boys ought to be trained to perform the 
heavy part of the washing of every family — the 
mere washing, I mean, without the ironing — as one 
of the proper employments of our own sex. 1. 
Because men, from their superior strength, will per- 
form the lahor so much easier, and when trained to 
it, so much better than women. 2. Because I 
know of no way of retrenching in this matter, so as 
on the whole to diminish the amount of this sort of 
labor in a family ; on the contrary, my views, if 
carried out, would require a much greater amount 
of washing than is usually done. 3. It is an em- 
ployment which is more purely mechanical — a 
work which has less to do with forming physical 
and moral character — than most other employments 
usually assigned to females. 4. Woman has quite 
enough of hard work to do without it ; especially 
if she spend several hours of nearly every day of 
the week in the open air, walking or riding, or at 
the proper season laboring moderately in the gar- 
den or the field. 5. If she performs her other 
duties correctly, according to the spirit of the 
principles which I am endeavoring to inculcate in 
this volume, she will save so much of the usual 
expenses attendant on house-keeping, that the hus- 
band can well afford to spare his son for the pur- 
pose. 



331 

Although I have given seireral reasons why 1 
think boys ought to be trained to assist their moth- 
ers about washing, and perhaps to do with their 
own hands the heaviest parts of it, it is not because 
the mother has no time for it. She has time enough 
for it, if she pursue the course of reform in house- 
keeping which I have suggested. Nor is it because 
there are not washer-women and might not be wash- 
er-men to do the work, either at our own houses or 
theirs. It is — I repeat it — chiefly because it is 
too purely a mechanical process for woman to 
engage in. 

God, in his providence, seems to have assigned 
to man, in social life, the preparation of the raw 
material, as it were ; and to woman, the process of 
working it up.* The prepai'ation of this raw ma- 
terial, it is indeed true, can be made a means of 
intellectual and moral development and elevation, 
much more than it usually is, especially with the 
agriculturist ; but after all, it is not so much man's 

* Let not the idea, that man is, by his more rugged nature, 
formed to do the coarser work of human life — to prepare the 
raw material, as I have expressed it — while woman, whose 
nature is all softness and love, is chiefly privileged to educate 
the child — to work up the material into body, mind and soul 
— let not this idea, I say, be rejected, until it has been duly 
considered. If it should be found true, it would help to de- 
cide, more than anything else, the often agitated question, 
What is the appropriate sphere of woman ? 



332 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

business to educate,* as woman's. Man does not 
have the daughter with him much of the time ; no, 
nor even the son, till his character is more than half 
formed. 

Now I wish to have the indications of Provi- 
dence, in this matter, carefully attended to. As 
man's employment seems to be coarser, and at a 
remoter distance from the child's mind and heart, 
to say nothing of his body, I would have him 
perform those employments, as much as possible, 
which are most purely mechanical, and which have 
the least direct tendency to form and develope 
character. But if woman performs all the other 
duties which are usually considered as belonging 
to her department — sweeping, scouring, ironing, 
ventilating rooms, beds and furniture, cooking, 
nursing, &:c. — ^and if she performs them inteUigibly 
to herself and her children, and is at the same time 
in all other respects their instructor and educator, it 
appears to me that she has as much as she can do, 
and more perhaps than she ought to do. 

If woman saves to man the trouble and expense 
of school-masters and physicians — and this she 
ought in a great measure to do — he can certainly 
afford to spare her the trouble of such drudgery as 
washing. I know, indeed, that washing may be 
made, by the love of woman, an instructive process ; 
but it is with - some difficulty. The best way is to 



COOKERY, AS IT SHOULD BE. 333 

leave it to the mechanism of man. It is much 
more reasonable to leave the washing to man than 
the baking ; and yet society, in what are called its 
most precious forms, is inundated with bakers of 
our sex. 

But to return to my subject, from which I may 
seem to have wandered. — Even if some fastidious 
reader should shrink from the idea of employing 
boys or men in anything which pertains to cookery 
or washing, there are numerous other services, of 
which it is scarcely necessary for me to remind 
those house-keepers who are mothers, which it is 
highly useful, both to the employers and the em- 
ployed, that they should render ; and which are, in 
my view, no less valuable than direct aid in cookery. 

How to make children of both sexes happy — 
yes, happiest — with the mother, requires, in all 
its details, a separate and very different volume from 
this. At present I will only say, that one reason 
why daughters are not more happy in domestic 
employments, is because mothers are not ; and that 
if mothers wish either sons or daughters to enjoy 
their society, and love domestic life and its employ- 
ments, they must first themselves cease to regard 
them as irksome. They must not only do this, but 
tliey must manifest the sincerity of their love for 
these employments, by conversing with their chil- 
dren about them. 



334 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Thus, while the mother is sewing or knitting, 
and one of the children is attending to the cakes,* 
or the potatoes, or the rice, or the beans, the 
mother can enter into familiar conversation on the 
subjects before them. Suppose they are simply 
baking a platter of rice in the oven of the stove. 
It had been prepared and set in by the mother 
before she sat down to her work. All the child 
has to do, is to watch and see that it does not bake 
too fast, or that the water is not wholly evaporated. 
In the mean time, is it of no im.portance to the 
chijd, to know how many hundreds of millions of 
people in the world live either chiefly or wholly on 
rice — how they raise it — how they cook it — what 
they eat with it for sauce or condiment — and why 
our modes of cooking and using it are preferable to 
theirs ? Or suppose the child is attending the set- 
ting in, watching, turning and taking up of a quanr 
tity of unleavened wheat meal cakes, previously 
kneaded and shaped by the mother, would it not be 
productive of the highest interest, yes, and profit, 
too, to know what nations of the east live chiefly 
on this sort of food — how they cook it — what they 

* I am thinking, here, not only of Indian cakes, but of 
cakes made of unbolted wheat or rye meal. And now my 
readers will see how it is that I can reconcile the making of 
these cakes with good, and just, and sound views of domestic 
economy. 



COOKERY, AS IT SHOULD BE. 335 

eat with it — their customs as to knives, forks, 
spoons, &;c. — and why our modes of cooking and 
eating it are preferable to theirs ? 

Beginning thus at home, by telhng about the 
food we are cooking, the implements used, Sec, 
the young mind might be led along, from time to 
time, to the manners and customs, the geography 
and the history, the character and the religion, of 
the various nations adverted to in speaking about 
the food ; and as the mind was duly developed 
and made ready for it, the house-keeper might 
speak of the elements of our food, its chemical na- 
ture, the method of raising it, the chemical changes 
produced by cooking, and finally, the effects pro- 
duced on the human constitution by hs use, which 
would lead to famihar conversation on anatomy, 
physiology, and the laws of health. 

In short, there is no end to the instruction which 
might be given by an intelligent housewife — one 
who was in love with her profession — to her young 
apprentices ; nor is there any end to the curiosity 
of the young on all subjects. 

Let me not — I repeat the request — ^be regarded 
as visionary in all this. I have seen all I have 
recommended, or at least the substantial of it, in 
practice ; and I have seen the house-keeper and 
the household reaping a harvest from it, both as 
regards economy, health and happiness. Experi- 



336 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

ments of the kind have ipdeed, as yet, been rare ; 
but they have been frequent enough to show what 
can be done. For what has been done, may be 
done again. 

The simple modes of cooking I have recom- 
mended in the beginning of this chapter, and the 
general principles I am laboring all along to incul- 
cate, if followed out; will lead to social indepen- 
dence, as well as to social felicity. The mother 
will be her own house-keeper, even if she performs 
all her own baking, washing, &c., and have time 
enough to educate her own children into the bar- 
gain. And if she lives in town or city, where her 
duties as a house-keeper are greatly increased, 
other aids are multiplied. Cities contain profes- 
sional bakers, and tailors, and washer-women ; so 
that even in the city, the mother, with her apprerv- 
tices and her partner in trade, should still be the 
sole house-keeper. Let me not be misunderstood. 
I am speaking of families in health, and which 
contain no members but their own. 

In commencing this chapter, I have gone upon 
tlie principle of adopting those household plans 
which are most compatible with health, without 
any compromise. I have spoken as if simplicity 
at the same meal, with variety at different meals., 
cool food, no drinks but water, and no condiments, 
were indispensable ; and as if no quarter were to 



COOKERY, AS IT SHOULD BE. 337 

be given to anything which is more in conformity 
with fashionable hfe. 

The rejection of hot drinks 1 consider indispen- 
sable, and I am unwilling to make any concession 
in their favor. More than this, even ; I beheve 
that no drink ouo;ht to be used with meals. — But 
if any one thinks otherwise, let him at least confine 
himself to water. This is his best, indeed 1 might 
say, his only drink. It is all — even of the coffee, 
and 4;ea, and cider — which quenches or ever did 
quench his natural thirst. 

But if people are determined to use condiments, 
some of them may be used without increasing 
much the labor of the house-keeper. Molasses, sugar 
and honey, to be added to rice, puddings, or other 
substances, (although I never use any such thing,) 
neither require nor involve much labor. The same 
may be said of vinegar, salt, pepper, spice, Sic.-; 
though not of gravies, compound sauces, jellies, 
pickles, preserves, grated cheese, butter, &c. These 
last ought not to be admissible by those who would 
be simple, frugal, healthful and happy. 

Again, if there are those who cannot, or who 
fancy they cannot, use temperate or cool food, it 
may be warmed a little, without much trouble. It 
costs a house-keeper very little labor to let a quan- 
tity of hommony, or bread, or rice, or potatoes, stand 
half an hour, or an hour, by the stove or fire-place, 
22 



338 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

till its temperature is somewhat raised. If in proper 
vessels, properly covered or defended from dust, 
any child can attend to it. 

Lastly, if there are some who wish to be simple, 
but cannot at first be reconciled to the idea of eat- 
ing of only one plain dish at a meal, they can use 
several. I have indeed said that the perfection of 
a meal consists in having but one article of food, 
and in having it prepared and eaten in the most 
simple manner. Still the union of two or three 
articles of kindred nature, as I have elsewhere inti- 
mated, is but a slight departure from the perfect 
law. 

As the housewife, time immemorial, has been 
accustomed to have her washing day, her baking 
day, and her brewing day, (when brewing was in 
fashion,) so can she now, if she chooses, have her 
boiling day or her roasting day. She can devote 
a day to boiling in a proper manner a large quan- 
tity of wholesome farinaceous vegetables, or roast- 
ing or baking a quantity of unleavened cakes ; and 
then whether one or a dozen of those which she 
has on hand are eaten at the same meal, she is not 
obliged to boil again for two or three days ; or she 
can cook at her leisure, and with comparatively 
little trouble, during the pi'ogress of every day. 

I must again say, that all which pertains to 
national cookery in a family, is very easily accoav-. 



COOKERY, AS IT SHOULD BE. 339 

plished ; and that it is the trimmings of our tables 
— the non-essentials rather than the essentials — • 
that so absorb the precious time of females. It is 
the preparing of tea, or coffee, or chocolate, or some 
hot drink, for nearly every meal ; and the prepara- 
tion of the dishes for these and their accompani- 
ments — sugar, molasses, cream, &;c. It is the 
preparation of hot rolls, hot biscuits, short cake, 
rich puddings, fritters, doughnuts, mince pies, and 
sausages — substances which, were they more easily 
prepared, ought never to enter a human stomach. 
It is the preparing of sauces, and gravies, and soups, 
and jellies, and ketchup, and tomatoes, and pickles, 
and oysters, and flummery, and the thousand simi- 
lar things, to assist in giving rather than in gratify- 
ing an appetite — ultimately to spoil it. It has 
come to this, at length, that you can scarcely sit 
down with plain people to what is called a plain 
meal, and find anything simple. Meat must have 
been salted and saltpetred, and perhaps smoked ; 
and then it must be cooked with eggs ; or if fresh 
meat or fish be used, it must be tortured into some 
unnatural shape or other, and peppered and gra- 
vied. A pudding of Indian, sweet already and 
rich as it ought to be, must have molasses and suet 
in it ; and be buttered and sugared or sauced after- 
ward. All sorts of pastry must be filled with lard 
or butter and eggs, and eaten hot, and with butter. 



340 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Mince pies must consist of eighteen or twenty dif- 
ferent articles. Even plain bread cannot be eaten 
plain. It must be hot, or toasted, or made into 
pap ; and plain fruits, rich from the Creator's hand, 
must be cooked, or in other words, tortured. 

Is it not certain, in view of this whole subject, 
that more than three fourths of the time now em- 
ployed by housewives, on that which is of no ad- 
vantage except to blunt slowly our appetites, de- 
stroy slowly our teeth and our powers of digestion, 
ruin our health, benumb our minds, and stupify 
our immortal souls, might, with perfect ease, and 
with a great gain even of physical enjoyment, be 
redeemed and employed in the more noble busi- 
ness of preparing and administering mental and 
moral food to those whose whole natures are con- 
tinually perishing, as they have been in all ages, 
for the want of it ? We shall better see how this 
is, by a few estimates on the subject. 



CHAPTER XLVI. 



ECONOMY OF TIME, BY A REFORMATION IN 
COOKERY. 

Estimates of labor. Table. Results of the estimates. Facts. 
Difficulties — some of them removed. Three fourths of 
female labor in cooking might be saved. Anecdotes to 
illustrate the subject. 

In prosecuting my inquiries on the subject of 
cookery, I submitted to several experienced house- 
keepers, in this city, the consideration of the fol- 
lowing question : — For how many adult individuals 
can an adult female of average strength and skill, 
prepare and furnish plain articles of food, if she 
has nothing else to do, and no other cares ? It 
is also understood, by the way, that the persons 
for whom she thus provides are, for the time, to 
use but one article of food, and not to exceed 
two pounds of it in a day. They are, moreover, 
to drink nothing but water, and to give the house- 
keeper no other trouble than just to prepare the 
table, wash the dishes, and perform the usual col- 
lateral duties. 



for 50 


persons 


" 50 




« 50 




« 75 




« 40 




" 75 




« 75 




" 75 





342 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

The answer to my inquiries was as follows : 

Of unbolted wheat meal bread, 
" Rice, boiled or baked, 
" Hommony, 
" Hasty pudding, or mush, 
" Hulled corn, 

" Brown bread, (rye and Indian,) 
" Beans, boiled or baked, 
" Peas, 
" Potatoes, boiled, steamed, baked 

or roasted, " 50 " 

" Unleavened cakes — thick, and 

made of wheat, rye, &c., " 25 " 

" Indian cakes, " 20 " 

The foregoing are some of the more substantial 
— I wish I could say more common — articles of 
food, in use among vegetable eaters, and hence it 
was that I fixed my eye upon them. It is indeed 
true that no house-keeper can be expected to be 
exclusively employed in cooking a single article 
for twenty, fifty, or seventy-five adults, for weeks 
and months together ; but I trust the time is not 
far distant when the business of intelligent and 
christian house-keepers, so far as cookery only is 
concerned, will be chiefly confined — not by con- 
straint, but voluntarily — to a selection of dishes, 
which, in addition to the fruits of the season, and 
beets, turnips, carrots, parsnips, onions, &£C., shall 
not embrace a much wider range. I speak now 






ECONOMY OF TIME. 343 

of the substantial articles of diet for every day's 
use, without intending wholly and at all times to 
exclude sago, tapioca, arrow-root, maccaroni, and 
even a few of the plainer pies and cakes. 

It will also be seen that, with the exception of 
two or three of the more important of these articles, 
a house-keeper is believed to be able to cook for 
about fifty adult persons a day. The average for 
the whole is about fifty -three. In other words, if 
eleven house-keepers were employed, the first in 
preparing wheat meal bread for fifty persons, the 
second, rice for fifty others, the fourth, hasty pud- 
ding for seventy-five more, and so on, the whole 
number of persons thus provided for at the eleven 
tables, would be five hundred and eighty-five, or 
an average of fifty-three to each. 

It should, however, be observed in this place, 
that it was deemed indispensable by the individ- 
uals who were consulted on the subject, that in 
order to cook for so large a number of persons, . 
there must be a full supply of culinary vessels and 
utensils, and that these must be of a sufficient size, 
and properly constructed. But, on the other hand, 
the allowance of two pounds of food a day is very 
large — almost twice as large as is demanded in 
order to promote our greatest physical comfort and 
well-being in the aggregate ; and those who are 
provided for are all considered as adults. The 



344 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

usual proportion of children would, I think, so alter 
the case that the same house-keeper would be able 
to cook and provide for about one fifth as many 
more as if the whole were adults ; so that the 
average, instead of being fifty-three, would be 
about • sixty-six. 

I ought also, in justice to that simplicity on 
which these calculations have an important bear- 
ing, to say, that I was assured by the house-keepers 
above-mentioned, that they had made their esti- 
mates in reference to the strength and skill of 
females as they now are, in the city of Boston, 
and not as they should be ; nor indeed as they 
actually are in the country. One of them stated, 
that instead of preparing wheat bread for fifty per- 
sons, she believed that many a strong and robust 
female would, by laboring hard, prepare a sufficient 
supply for two hundred. 

But I have also consulted other house-keepers 
on this highly interesting subject. The result of 
my inquiries, added to a long course of observa- 
tion, has convinced me that the foregoing estimates 
are exceedingly low. The truth is, there was a 
general wish to avoid exaggeration ; and to state 
everything quite within the limits of truth. I be- 
lieve that ten of the twelve individuals I consulted 
would, without the least detriment to their health, 
do twice the quantity of work which is by the 



ECONOMY OF TIME. 345 

Statement assigned to others. One of the number 
has been actually known, for a single season or so, 
to provide, not one article merely, but the very large 
variety of a temperance boarding house, (with the 
exception of baking bread,) for about fifty persons — 
a task equal to that of cooking a single article for 
one hundred and fifty, if not for two hundred. 

The interesting experiment of Robert Owen, of 
New Lanark, in Scotland, together with extensive 
observations elsewhere, compelled him to the fol- 
lowing conclusions ; viz., that under the best ar- 
rangements which, in the present state of art, sci- 
ence, and human improvement, can be made, " the 
same trouble will provide for one thousand as is 
now required for one family," or, in other words, 
that in such circumstances as a due regard to the 
formation of social and moral character most impe- 
riously demand, at the present time, and as are 
entirely practicable, " the best provisions will be 
cooked in the best manner, under arrangements 
that will enable five or six individuals to prepare 
provisions for one thousand." He adds, moreover, 
that all this can be done, too, in not more than 
eight hours a day of pleasant occupation. I have 
nothing to do with Mr. Owen's speculations and 
theories, social, political or moral ; but here he 
spoke as a plain, practical man; and I believe 
future experience will show that he was right. 



346 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

But, it may be said, should one family live on 
bread, another on rice, another on potatoes, he. ? 
Or would you have a family live a month or a 
year on a single article, be it ever so excellent ? 
No such thing. I have a different object in view — 
wholly so. That object is to redeem a part of the 
time of every female, and especially every mother, 
from a less noble employment, so that she may be 
enabled to devote a reasonable proportion of her 
hours daily to a task more excellent — nay, more 
glorious — that of cultivating or improving the mind 
and heart of herself and others. 

If females calling themselves tolerably healthy 
and skilful can, upon the average, cook for families 
of sixty-six persons a day — and I cannot avoid 
thinking this to be the smallest number which T 
ought to name, in such a connection — then a family 
which consists of six persons should employ a 
house-keeper in the same way, but an eleventh 
part of her time ; and one of eleven persons — a 
very large one of course — only one sixth. This 
would seem to leave five sixths, in the one case, 
and ten elevenths in the other, for more noble and 
useful employments. 

There will be a thousand difficulties, in the 
minds of many, with these statements, cautiously 
guarded as they are, to avoid exaggeration. Nor 
is it an easy task, after all, to make, in few words, 



ECONOMY OF TIME. 347 

all the qualifications which are necessary. More 
time, for example, is consumed, in proportion to 
the number of members of a family, when that 
number is small, than when it is large. It takes 
nearly as long to set a table and spread a cloth for 
five persons as for twenty.; and this being done, 
five persons are actually as long in eating as fifty 
or five hundred. It may also be thought that if a 
family requires or demands bread at a certain meal, 
hommony at the next, rice at the next, potatoes at 
the next, &;c., or if they require two or three plain 
dishes at the same meal, the labor of the house- 
keeper will be greatly increased. It may indeed 
be slightly so, in the necessary washing of a few 
more dishes ; but the difference will not be great. 

On the whole, therefore, and in view of all con- 
siderations, I believe it will be safe to say, that the 
cooking of the most rational, and wholesome, and 
appropriate articles of food, in the most rational 
and wholesome manner, for families of from five to 
ten persons, ought not, in any case, to consume 
more than one fourth of a healthy house-keeper's 
time ; and that in all cases she can have and 
ought to have three fourths of it for other pur- 
poses. If she buys her bread of the baker, the 
time demanded for cooking is still less ; but the 
making of her own bread is a point on which I 
especially insist as indispensable. 



348 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Of the three fourths of her time thus remaining, one 
fourth, will need to be devoted to washing, ironing, 
mending, making, he. At some seasons, the pro- 
portion may be greater than one fourth, especially 
if we insist largely on cleanliness. On the other 
hand, if the washing and making be done out of 
the family — and I see no reason why, in most 
cases, it may not be — where mothers have large 
families, these last named occupations will con- 
sume less than one fourth of the time of a female. 
In any case, however, she will have about one 
half her time saved to be devoted to other pur- 
poses ; viz., to the social, the intellectual, the moral, 
and the religious education of herself, her husband, 
and her children. 

Of the particular methods of conducting this 
education, I do not intend, in this place, to speak. 
The task of suggesting what proportion of time 
should be allotted to conversation, walks, reading, 
study, visiting, recreation, school, he, would of it- 
self require a volume. 

It is indeed true, that every step which the 
house-keeper takes is educating, physically, the 
household over which she presides ; especially the 
younger members of it. A due attention to food, 
drink, air, cleanliness, &c., is one of the most im- 
portant departments of human education, especially 
when we consider how much a sound mind and 



ECONOBIY OF TIME. 349 

heart depend on a sound and healthy condition of 
the body. Nor is it less true that a house-keeper 
may be giving much social and moral — not to say 
intellectual — instruction, in the way of interesting 
conversation with the children, while she is actually 
at labor ; as I have already said elsewhere. 

It is most cheerfully acknowledged that the 
views here presented would have met with a 
better reception fifty years ago, while few of our 
mothers were removed, either by pride or ill health, 
from the duties of the kitchen. But it must also 
be remembered, that the work was not then needed. 
It is the very errors of modern times that render 
what I say so necessary to be heard. It is be- 
cause mothers have not only ceased to be house- 
keepers, but in ceasing to be the physical educa- 
tors of their families, they are losing their intel- 
lectual, and social, and moral influence. Never, I 
say again, can the world be what it should be, till 
the mother and the house-keeper are re-united, as a 
general rule, in the same individual ; nay, more — 
till parents and domestic circles become, for the 
most part, the educators and seminaries of education 
of our race. 

I might fill a long chapter, (even in these days 
of degeneracy,) did my limits permit, with exam- 
ples which go to show not only that woman can 
do all that I propose, but that she and the world 



350 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

around her are blessed in her deeds. I might 
speak of a lady, now more than seventy years of 
age, who for forty years has had boarders in her 
family — usually from four to fifteen — and though 
most of the time a widow, with two young daugh- 
ters, and in poverty, has done all her worJc and 
going to market, with no help, except occasionally 
a little aid about her washing — and who is able 
still to do the work for four or five boarders. I 
might name a mother, not remarkably healthy, who, 
with several children — one of them not over three 
months old — a husband, and a very aged and al- 
most helpless mother, for her family, will bake a 
large quantity of bread, get breakfast, and take care 
of her children, and have everything out of the 
way by nine o'clock in the morning. True, such 
examples are rare ; but they show what can be 
done when an attempt is made. 



CHAPTER XLVII. 



EXPENSE OF ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE FOOD 
COMPARED. 

Table of comparisons. Results. Objections considered. 
Examples to illustrate the subject. Another table of 
comparison. Preservation of cooked vegetable food. A 
third table. Fourth table. Reflections. 

In order to make some estimates of the compar- 
ative saving of expense, both of time and money, 
by adopting a simple system of house-keeping, I 
have constructed the following table of prices of 
articles by the _pottnc/, (the best in their kind,) as 
usually obtained in the quantities purchased by 
most families ; and at the prices — some high and 
others low — which, so far as I could learn, pre- 
vailed in the Boston market, at the time of con- 
structing it. Perfect accuracy I do not indeed 
suppose I have attained ; but I have spared no 
pains to be as accurate as possible, especially in all 
the more essential and important points. It may 
seem odd to many, to find some articles, as mo- 
lasses or eggs, for example, estimated by the pound, 
but the nature of the case required it. 



352 



THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 



The first column, with a very few exceptions, 
consists of articles which pertain to a system of 
plain living. The second, with the like exception 
of a few articles which are common to both sys- 
tems, consists of articles which belong more pecu- 
liarly to the tables of the flesh-eating and the 
fashionable. 



Cts. per lb. 
Unbolted wheat meal, 5 
Wheat flour, ... 5 

Rice, 54 

Buckwheat flour, . . 6 
Oat meal, .... 6 
Peas, ..... G 

Beans, G 

Wheat hommony, . 5^ 
Indian hommony, . 4 
Indian meal, ... 3 
Rye meal, .... 3 
Corn, best, . . . . 2^ 
Sweet potatoes, . . 3 

Onions, 3 

Beets, 1^ 

Turnips, . . . . 1^ 
Common potatoes, . 1 
Apples, . . . IJ to 3 
Pears, . . . l-i to 3 
Cabbage, , . l.J to 3 
Squashes, . . 2 to 3 
Crackers, . . 10 to 12i 

Sago, 8 

Tapioca and maccaroni,12i 
Arrow-root, ... 25 





Cts. per lb. 


Chicken, . 


. 20 to 25 


Turkey, . 


. 20 to 25 


Butter, . . 


. 20 to 25 


Eggs, . . 


. . saylG 


Cheese, 


. . . 12i 


Beef, . . 


. 12 to 15 


Lamb, . . 


. . . 12^ 


Fork, . . 


. . 12i 


Ham, . . 


. 10tol2i 


Sausage, . 


. . 12.i 


Lard, . . . 


. . 12.i 


Geese, . . . 


. . 10 


Veal, . . . 


. . 8 


Fish, fresh, . 


. . 6 


Fish, dried, . 


. . 4 


Honey, best, . 


. . 17 


Loaf sugar, . 


. . 18 


Maple sugar. 


. . 124 


Brown sugar. 


. . 10 


Molasses, . . 


. . G 


Vinegar, . . 


. . 3 


Milk, . . . 


. . 3 



EXPENSE OF FOOD COMPARED. 353 

Now if we take ten, fifteen, or twenty of the 
more prominent articles of each of the preceding 
lists, and compare their cost, we shall find that the 
average expense of any given quantity of tho5e on 
the left hand is less than one fourth as much as 
that of those on the right hand. For example, 
one pound each of the best wheat flour, rice, beans, 
Indian corn, Indian hommony, Indian meal, rye 
.flour, potatoes, beets, turnips, cabbage and apples — 
twelve articles — will not cost over forty cents ; 
while one pound of each of the following twelve 
articles — chicken, turkey, butter, eggs, cheese, beef, 
lamb, pork, ham, sausage, lard and fish — will cost 
one dollar and seventy-five cents, or considerably 
more than four times as much. 

I have placed sugar, molasses, and some other 
articles in very general use among all classes of the 
community, and which are comparatively expen- 
sive, at the foot of the right hand column ; but 
then it will also be observed, that I have placed 
arrow-root, tapioca, maccaroni, &,c., which are also 
costly, on the other side. 

If it should be said that families do not use 
these things, in anything like equal proportion — 
which is undoubtedly true — still the remark is as 
applicable to the articles of one column as to those 
of the other. For example, if it is said that the 
principles of my estimates involve the idea that a 
23 



354 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

family uses a pound of butter or turkey, as often 
as a pound of beef or pork, it might also be re- 
plied, that on the other hand, one pound of beans 
and *one of rice, at five or six cents a pound, are 
supposed to be used as often as a pound of pota- 
toes at one cent, or of Indian meal at three. 

If it should be objected to this mode of compari- 
son, that there are no families to be found who 
confine themselves wholly to the articles in the 
right hand column of the table, and that in so far 
as they use an admixture of the others, the com- 
parative difference in the expense of the two 
modes of living would be greatly diminished, I 
grant the premises, but do not admit the conclu- 
sion. For as the flesh-eating part of the commu- 
nity do actually eat more or less of vegetable food, 
so the vegetable eaters do, in some instances, use — 
and in pretty large quantities, too — many of the 
more costly articles which I have here assigned 
to the right hand column ; such as sugar, and 
honey, and butter, and even lard. Besides, there 
are other costly items of table expenditure which 
usually accompany the use of flesh, but which do 
not belong at all to a vegetable course, and which 
I believe are usually rejected ; viz. tea and coffee, 
and the more costly spices, and sauces, and pre- 
serves. One gentleman with a family of fourteen 
or fifteen persons, told me his tea and coffee bill — 



EXPENSE OF FOOD COMPARED. 355 

including the milk, sugar, Sic, used with them — 
was not less than one hundred dollars a year. I 
do not know the exact cost of such things to fami- 
lies ; but I know it must be considerable. I can- 
not doubt, therefore, that the actual expense of the 
uncooked materials — for I have as yet gone no far- 
ther in this chapter than to compare what may be 
regarded as raw materials — for livins; on a rational 
vegetable system, is diminished, or might be dimin- 
ished, at the rate which appears on the face of the 
table ; that is, three fourths. 

A single example may make this perfectly plain. 
Five hundred and fifty pounds of Indian meal will 
make seven hundred and thirty of Indian cake, of 
medium dryness. This, at two pounds a day, 
which is quite as much nutriment as the most 
healthy, hard laboring person ought to receive, 
would last him about a year ; and two thousand 
two hundred pounds of the same meal would be 
sufficient for an ordinary family of five persons — or 
even six — including a husband, a wife, and sev- 
eral children. But the expense — for the material 
merely — would be for the individual only sixteen 
dollars and fifty cents, and for the family, only 
sixty-six dollars a year. 

But how far would sixteen dollars and fifty 
cents, laid out, say in beef — ^by no means the most 
expensive article of family use — go towards sus^ 



356 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

taining a person a year ? Why, it would not buy, 
at the utmost, but about one hundred and twenty 
pounds of beef. This would give less than one 
third of a pound a day, for the year ; or, as Indian 
cake is fully twice as nutritious as the average of 
beef, only one twelfth the nutriment which the 
vegetable eater would obtain from his five hundred 
and fifty pounds of meal. 

Wheat flour, it is true, and perhaps rice, and 
one or two other articles, cost a little more than 
Indian meal in proportion to the amount of nutri- 
ment they afford, but then, on the other hand, 
potatoes, apples, &c., cost somewhat less ; so that 
I think Indian meal and beef may fairly be set off, 
the one against the other. 

And as to the cookery, it will not probably be 
doubted by any that the preparation of flesh and 
fish, together with that of pastry, which in its nu- 
merous forms is usually an accompaniment, is much 
the most expensive. It would be so, independent 
of the seasonings, and sauces, and gravies, which 
are reckoned indispensable. And if it should be 
said, that people eat more — that is, a greater 
amount of nutriment — who confine themselves to 
vegetable food, than they do who use a portion of 
flesh meat, the statement, though true, might be met 
by another, which is, that vegetable food seems to 
be, for the most part, not only improved but in- 



EXPENSE OF FOOD COMPARED. 357 

creased in quantity by cookery, whereas animal 
food of almost every description sustains a slight 
loss by the cooking processes. Thus, as in the 
cases above, one pound of Indian meal will make 
a pound and a third of good bread or cake ; and 
two hundred pounds of wheat meal, or flour, will 
make, as I have said elsewhere, about two hundred 
and seventy-five pounds of good bread. Nor does 
the difference consist wholly in the addition of 
water to the meal, for two hundred and seventy- 
five pounds of bread are believed to contain much 
more nutriment than two hundred pounds of flour, 
were the latter equally palatable and digestible ; 
and the same thing is probably true, at least in a 
measure, of all other bread stuff's — and even of 
peas, beans, &c. 

The following table exhibits the increase, in 
weight, of several common articles during the pro- 
cess of cookery ; though it does not, of course, de- 
termine the increase of nutriment : 



100 lbs, 


, wheat flour make about 


135 lbs. oi 


rbre 


100 " 


Indian meal 






125 to 144 " 


li 


100 " 


hommony 






333 to 400 " 




100 « 


rice 






250 to 300 " 




100 « 


peas 






175 to 200 " 




100 " 


beans 






175 to 200 " 





I have adverted to the difference in the ex- 
pense of cooking the two great classes of articles 



358 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

which are presented in our first table ; but the 
nature of the subject requires a few more particu- 
lar remarks. If the vegetable-eater chooses to do 
it, he may spend as much time in cooking his 
favorite articles as the flesh-eater ; but not without 
causing a proportionate deterioration in the quality, 
if not loss of quantity. An equal degree of per- 
fection in the preparation of the two classes of 
nutrient substances demands far more labor where 
a mixed diet is used, than when we confine our- 
selves, exclusively, either to animal or vegetable 
food. A diet exclusively animal would be pre- 
pared with comparative ease ; but one exclusively 
vegetable, much more easily and cheaply still. 

There is, however, another important view of 
the case, in making a comparison. Vegetable 
food, in nearly all its si^ppler forms, can be pre- 
served much longer in perfection after it is cooked, 
than animal food. This susceptibility of long 
preservation is generally in proportion to its sim- 
plicity. Thus, boiled corn, or rice, or baked un- 
leavened cakes, (whether of one kind of material 
or another,) may be preserved, with a little care, 
for a long time. But when to the corn you add 
salt or butter, to the rice, salt, or any other condi- 
ment, and to the bread, salt, milk and yeast, it is 
rendered somewhat more liable to decay ; though 
even in these latter conditions, food may be pre- 



EXPENSE OF FOOD COMPARED. 359 

served for a long time. Peas, beans, potatoes, 
beets, turnips, &c., plainly cooked, may even be 
preserved for some time, in the hottest weather ; 
though in cool weather much longer, without dete- 
rioration. But it is not so, in general, with animal 
food or mixed dishes. With most of these there 
is a much more rapid tendency to decay ; and 
many of them cannot be preserved, in perfection, 
at all. — I might have said, for It is true, that some 
vegetable substances actually improve, both in taste 
and quality, by keeping ; for example, bread, rice, 
hommony, &c. They not only, for some time, 
become more and more savory to the correct ap- 
petite, but by becoming more and more solid, they 
require a greater amount and degree of mastication. 
Do you ask what advantages are gained to 
the vegetable-eater by a knowledge of the last 
mentioned fact ? But is it possible they can be 
mistaken ? Is it of no consequence, in point of 
economy, either of fuel or time, that we can bake 
bread enough at once to last ten, twelve or fifteen 
days ; that we can prepare unleavened cakes, rice, 
hommony or mush enough, at once, to last eight 
or ten days, and peas, beans, potatoes and other 
vegetables enough to last three, four or seven days ? 
According to the modern fashion of using mixed 
dishes, requiring eight, ten, twelve or twenty of 
them at the same meal, and requiring them hot, 



360 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

and this repeated three times a day, it comes to 
pass, that not only one or two articles, but nearly 
every article on the table, except perhaps bread, 
must be cooked for each particular meal. Even 
bread which is not hot from the oven, unless heated 
anew by toasting, will go down most throats with 
very great difficulty. This constantly repeated 
process of boiling, broihng, steaming, steeping, 
soaking, warming, roasting and toasting, repeated 
at almost every meal — to say nothing of preparing 
tea, coffee, chocolate, shells, gravies, sauces, and 
half a dozen other abominations which need not 
be named — consumes an amount of valuable time, 
to say nothing of the loss to the vital powers, 
both of the cook and those who partake, from the 
unnecessary external and internal heat, which is 
immense — but which a rational vegetable system 
would almost entirely prevent or save. But 1 
have dwelt on this, at sufficient length, in other 
places. 

I have one more table to construct before I 
leave the economical part of my subject. Let us 
suppose the five hundred and fifty pounds of Indian 
meal, to an individual, for one year, to be the 
standard — I mean for an adult — and two thousand 
two hundred pounds to be that of a family. I 
believe this to be a most liberal allowance, but I 
intend it shall be so. The expense of thisj at two 



EXPENSE OF FOOD COMPARED. 



361 



and a half cents a pound, which is as high as it 
ought to be computed, would be, for a family of 
five persons, only fifty-five dollars. But as com 
can generally, in ordinary times, be purchased for 
a dollar a bushel, by those who are disposed to lay 
in a stock for their families, the expense might be 
reduced in that way, to little more than forty-five 
dollars. However, to be liberal, I am willing to 
set the actual expense to such a family, for this 
material, at fifty-two dollars a year — or one dollar 
a week for the whole family. No family of five 
persons can require more. This, let it not be 
forgotten, is about two pounds of good, substantial 
Indian cake or bread to the adult individual, daily. 
Let us now see how many ounces of some other 
materials the same expenditure of a dollar a week 
would give to an adult individual daily, estimating 
his wants at one fourth of the family. 



VEGETABLE FOOD. 

OZ. 

Of peas, beans, buckwheat 

flour, &c., about . . . 9J 
Rice and wheat hommony, lOJ 
Wheat meal, flour, &c., 11^ 
Sweet potatoes, rye meal, 

Indian meal, &c., . . 19 
Common potatoes, . . 54^ 
Beets, turnips, &c., . .38 
Apples, squashes, &c.,28 to 30 
Honey and loaf sugar, . 3^ 



ANIMAL FOOD. 

OZ. 

Chicken and turkey, say 2f 

Eggs, 3| 

Beef, 4J 

Lamb , pork , ham, sausage , 4| 

Fish, 9^ 

Milk, 18 



362 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

• Thus we see how small an amount of beef, lamb, 
pork, sausage, chicken and turkey, can be bought 
daily, for a sum that would be sufficient to supply 
a person liberally with good and nutritious vegeta- 
ble food. But as most of these vegetable articles 
are about twice as nutritious as animal food, we 
need another table still, constructed from the last. 
For as animal food — eggs, perhaps, excepted — 
contains only about half as much nutriment as good 
vegetable food, the true comparison would be more 
nearly as follows : 

Peas, beans, &c., about 9.;^ Chicken and turkey, about IJ 

Riceand wheat hommony, 10^ Eggs, 1| 

Wheat meal, flour, &c., 11^ Beef, 2J 

Indian meal, &c., . . 19 Lamb, pork, &c., . . . 2J 

Potatoes, 54^ Fish '. . . 4% 

Every one will now see the true difterence 
between vegetable and animal food, so far as ex- 
pense is concerned. For no one will suppose that 
a daily amount of chicken or turkey, which, in 
point of nutrition, will be only equal to one ounce 
and three tenths of good vegetable food, will sustain 
a person — whereas fifty-four and a half ounces 
of potatoes will do so ; and so will the amount 
given in the table of either of the other articles. 
Some may suppose that even this amount is rather 
stinted ; but they forget the increase, in weight, by 



EXPENSE OF FOOD COMPARED. 363 

cookery. Thus, the nine and a half ounces of 
peas and beans above, would be, by cookery, in- 
creased to a pound or more ; the wheat meal or 
flour to about a pound ; the rice to considerably 
more than a pound and a half; the Indian meal to 
twenty-seven or twenty-eight ounces ; — the pota- 
toes remaining in weight and bulk about the same. 
The animal food, as we have before seen, is dimin- 
ished rather than increased in weight, by cookery. 
If the question arises here — and it is a very 
natural one — how it happens that people who use 
a given amount of animal food at a meal, say five 
ounces, are better satisfied with it than they would 
be with the same quantity of vegetable food, con- 
taining twice as much nutriment, the answer is 
easy, and though given elsewhere, may be briefly 
repeated. 1. The nervous excitement induced by 
the more stimulating animal food, is mistaken for 
strength, while the milder vegetable food usually 
produces no such immediate sensible changes. 2. 
The animal food is, in its own nature, more cloying 
than the vegetable. 3. It is still more so, in con- 
sequence of the things usually conjoined with it, 
either in the form of gravy, butter, sauce or condi- 
ment. 4. These conjoined or adjunct substances 
are also heating and exciting, and give a temporary 
but deceptive strength. 5. The individual who eats 
his five ounces of meat, seldom fails to eat a good 



364 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER, 

deal of other food. True, he does not eat so 
much else pf any one dish as the vegetable eater 
often does. He who eats a whole dinner, or nearly 
a whole dinner, of a single article — as bread, rice, 
beans or potatoes — will often be set down as a 
large eater, when he has actually eaten less, in 
weight, even of vegetable food, than the eater of 
flesh meat ; for the latter is apt to eat a portion 
of this dish and a portion of that, from half a dozen 
or a dozen dishes ; and so the amount he consumes 
appears less than it actually is. It is not indeed 
to be denied, that the vegetable-eater usually has 
tlie better appetite ; and as his food is less cloying, 
he is often in great danger of over-eating ; still, 
it is beheved that he does not so much exceed the 
flesh eater, in this respect, as is sometimes imag- 
ined ; and he never feels, like him, a desire for 
something between meals, or for exciting drinks. 

I have known many a family of from two or 
three to five or six persons, where the husband 
and wife were accustomed to toil like slaves from 
day-light till bed-time, to clothe, and shelter, and 
sustain themselves and their children, in what they 
deemed a decent style, to the neglect not only 
of all recreations and all social visits for conversa- 
tion, but even of personal comfort and health ; 
when all the while they could have earned enough 
in three quarters of the time which they devoted 



EXPENSE OP FOOD COMPARED. 365 

to labor, to sustain them in princely style, did they 
only understand the true philosophy of living, and 
had they but moral courage enough to practice 
according to their knowledge. I have known 
others who, reduced to poverty by sickness, ren- 
dered themselves a thousand times more wretched 
than was necessary, simply for want of the same 
knowledge and courage ; and who, when pointed 
to a better course, only made light of the counsel 
afforded them. 

I was once called to visit a patient in one of our 
populous cities, in a low state of health, to whom I 
found, on examination, that exercise in a carriage 
was indispensable. But after proposing and urging 
it, his wife told me very frankly, that they had 
spent all their living on physicians, and their cir- 
cumstances did not admit of the expense. I 
reminded her that there was an omnibus passing the 
door every hour, that would carry the patient two 
or three miles on a quiet road, for twelve and a half 
cents. But I found from farther conversation, that 
even this was believed to be quite beyond their 
means. 

And yet I saw there, gingerbread and fine flour 
bread, hot from the bakers, and fine cuts of flesh 
meat fi-om the shambles, and a variety of other 
articles of doubtful utility, to say nothing of some 
which were rather more than doubtful. This 



366 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

family, though it would be deemed frugal, at pres- 
ent, by the mass of mankind, might save, by 
retrenchment in things which do not at all contri- 
bute to their happiness — such as coffee, tea, and 
other hot drinks, sugar, molasses, butter, cheese, 
pastry, spices, &c., enough and more than enough, 
every day, to carry the sick man out of town in 
the omnibus, and return him again. And in the 
simplicity of my heart I told them so. 

But what will be the consequence ? Why, they 
partly believed me, as I suppose ; and perhaps 
thought for the moment to profit from my remarks. 
The husband has a perfect appetite, and is willing* 
to live in any way I propose ; and the wife, at the 
moment, thinks she is. Yet when she comes to 
act, she will probably act about as she always has 
done. It is extremely difficult for house-keepers 
to make changes which even their consciences 
approve ; so powerful is custom. There must 
be just about so many dishes at table, and they 
must occupy such and such places ; and they must 
be thus or so filled ; for if not, the house-keeper 
feels as if she were lost ; and if she is one of the 
company, perhaps loses her appetite. 

Mrs. sets out her breakfast table, with 

coffee, sugar, cream, butter, cheese, hot bread, 
toast, crackers, bread, pies, hash, pitcher, water 
and tumblers. Now if you could convince her 



EXPENSE OF FOOD COMPARED. 367 

most fully, that bread, crackers and water were 
sufficient, and that such a breakfast would afford 
much more, even of animal enjoyment, than her for- 
mer collection — I say if her mind were most folly 
convinced of all this, she would find it extremely 
difficult to begin. She would feel as if there were 
nothing on the table, if there were no other articles 
of food but bread and crackers. She would be 
miserable herself in thinking how miserable others 
must be in the practice of so much simplicity. 

I left the house of ray friend and patient with 
a very heavy heart. It is no easy matter to 
make up one's mind to see a young man of tliirty 
years of age, given up to a lingering death, without 
an effort to save him, because that effort will cost 
twenty-five cents a day ; when, too, the twenty-five 
cents may be secured with the utmost ease, by a 
little useful retrenchment. But is it an uncommon 
case ? I think hundreds and thousands of cases 
of this description, that is, substantially such, might 
be found in society daily. People will destroy 
life, and health, and peace, and piety, for the sake 
of following old customs and habits ; and then after 
all, contrive to throw the blame on a system of 
things foraied by the great Creator. 

I hope the time will soon arrive — the glad time 
for man's whole nature, physical and moral — when, 
in full view of the fact, that fifty-two dollars and 



368 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

one or two hours of female labor every day, will 
supply any healthy family of two adults and two 
or three children a whole year, with the best and 
most agreeable food, and in the richest abundance^ 
it will not be common to see such families misera- 
ble — not only really miserable now, but dying a 
thousand deaths in fearing one — though annually 
expending for food, two or three hundred dollars. 
Nothing is more common — I repeat it — than to 
see great want, both imaginary and real, in a 
family, while a sum is expended on food, and 
without any supposed waste, which would amply 
and liberally supply with rich, nutritious and agree- 
able food, at least four just such families. 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 

HOW TO BEGIN THE WORK OF REFORMATION. 

First principle. Sudden changes. First direction to inqui- 
rers. Difficulties in their way. These difficulties illus- 
trated. None need fear to do what is known to be right. 
Anecdote. Supposed process of reform in house-keeping. 
Remarks and reflections. 

I TAKE for granted the great principle that we 
may learn to relish, and even to prefer, those kinds 
of food which we believe to be best for us. In 
treating of manners and morals, a distinguished 
writer has told us to fix on such a course of con- 
duct as we know to be best for us, and custom 
or habit will soon make it agreeable. And the 
principle is as applicable to dietetics as to manners 
or morals. 

But the question arises in the minds of indi- 
viduals, and is often asked — Are sudden changes 
desirable, or should reform be gradual ? The 
principle involved in the answer to the question, 
whether it be asked with reference to the duty of 
individuals or families, is the same. Much, in 
24 



370 THE YOUNG HOITSE-KEEPER. 

both cases, will depend on previous habits, and on 
present light and knowledge ; and more still, on 
the depth of our conviction of the necessity of 
change. 

My first direction to inquiring individuals or 
families is — Do that which you know to be right ; 
and then, on the same great principle which is 
applied to religious matters, " he that doeth the 
truth cometh to the-, light." And not only do 
that which you know you ought, but do it imme- 
diately. There is seldom any danger in acting up 
to the dictates of our consciences. 

The great difficulty with most inquirers in die- 
tetics is, that they are not more than half convinced 
of the necessity of that reform of which they say 
so much. They have not faith enough. They 
go to work, indeed ; but they are not decided. 
They have many misgivings, and some fears. And 
the reason is, they are not fully convinced. 

A house-keeper has heard, perhaps, from some- 
body in whose general veracity she can confide, 
that hot newly baked bread is not so wholesome as 
that which is a day or two old. Well, she partly 
believes it. But as she knows not the reason why — 
at least not fully — as it is a great self-denial to her 
to relinquish hot bread, and as she feels the want 
of her accustomed stimulus — the heat — when she 
dispenses with it, she is undecided and doubtful. 



HOW TO BEGIN REFORMATION. 371 

She is afraid of the evils of sudden changes. 
She hesitates. Appetite cries loudly against her. 
Fashion bids her beware. She demurs. Finally 
she makes some changes in her own habits, if not 
in those of her household. She quits her tea. 
Then her neighbors begin to tell her how pale she 
looks, and increase her attention to herself and her 
feelings ; and if she has no bad feelings, she fancies 
she has, till they are at length induced. The fear 
of evil of this sort, usually brings evil. She vacil- 
lates and trembles, and perhaps goes back. 

And as it is with individuals, so it is with fami- 
lies. What is wanted is a thorough and abiding 
conviction of the truth of principles ; such a con- 
viction as shall fasten on the conscience. 

Mr. Johnson's family consists of himself and 
wife, four children, three of them quite young, a 
domestic, and two friends of the family, who, for our 
present purpose, may be considered as boarders. 

One of the two friends, an aged maiden lady, 
has caught, by some means, the true spirit of die- 
tetic reform, and is not only fast reforming her own 
habits, but is endeavoring, by her example, to re- 
form those of the family. Not so much, it is true, 
by frequent discussion of the subject, as by silent 
example. 

This example is differently construed. By Mr. 
J.J himself, it is interpreted correctly, and its reason- 



372 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

ableness has rendered him a convert to her system ; 
and he is exceedingly anxious that his children 
should be trained in the simplicity she inculcates. 
But how can it be done ? His wife has received a 
different impression. She views the departures 
of the old lady (whom I will call Mrs. R.) from 
custom, as mere whims ; nay, she feels inclined to 
regard her simple selection of food and drink as a 
reproach to herself, and is at times much pained on 
account of it. The domestic and the eldest daugh- 
ter incline to the side of Mrs. J. ; and the other 
children are divided in feeling — now inclining to 
follow the father, and now yielding to their way- 
ward appetite and the example of their mother. 
The younger boarder in the family seems also 
undecided. 

Mr. J., as I have already intimated, is anxious 
for reform, and endeavors, slowly and cautiously, to 
effect it. Mrs. J. too, at times, seems almost won 
by his representations. But look at Miss R., she 
soon says. See her — a whimsical, sickly old maid ; 
do you think I am going to follow her notions ? 
Besides, if she has a better system than that which 
now prevails, why does she not tell us what it is ? 
I have long sought to draw forth her sentiments, 
but have hitherto been wholly unable. 

It was in vain to assure her that Miss R. had 
been for twenty years, until recently, a poor sick 



HOW TO BEGIN EEFORMATION. 373 

creature ; and that two years of reformation, though 
it had not done everything for her, had ah-eady 
done wonders, and promised to do much more ; 
and that as to her silence, it was maintained from 
pure principle, in the belief, whether right or wrong, 
that example was far more efficacious. — It was in 
vain, I say, for Mr. J. to urge all this, for Mrs. J. 
either could not or would not understand it. 

The result was, a perpetual want of harmony in 
the plans and conduct of the family. Mrs. J., 
though unconvinced, was somewhat anxious to 
please Mr. J., and especially to comply with his 
desire to live more economically ; and as it was 
necessary to prepare plain food for Miss R. and for 
her husband, she labored hard to conform the habits 
of her children to the new standard. She labored 
hard, I say ; but her labors were so inconsistent 
and so vacillating, as to be worse than useless. 

Nor were her efforts long continued. She soon 
found, she said, that the new system was quite as 
expensive as the old one ; and as one of the chil- 
dren happened at this time to be affected with 
worms, it was attributed to the coarse food he ate. 
She was sure it was the food, for on ransacking a 
parcel of medical books, she found coarse vegeta- 
bles, (that is, in the book language, crude ones,) in 
excess, were set down as one of a thousand causes 
of verminous diseases ; and therefore, no doubt, the 



374 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

bread, and rice, and pudding which Samuel had 
eaten within a week or two, were the sole cause 
of all his troubles ! 

And now commenced a scene which was as far 
removed from true domestic reform as could well 
be conceived. Plain vegetable food for Mr. J., 
Miss R. and the children, was always prepared, 
and in good condition. Of this, all ate freely 
and sufficiently, except herself and the domestic. 
When the repast was finished, and the company 
dispersed, Mrs. J. had her beef-steak, or her but- 
tered toast, or her richly prepared pies or cakes ; 
and the stomachs of the children, though they had 
already been more than filled, could sometimes 
receive a little more. The domestic, too, must 
have her supply of high-seasoned flesh, or fish, or 
soup, or rich cake. 

Nor was this all. Contrary to all reason and 
sense, not only the domestic, but the lady herself 
and her children, must all have a luncheon ; and 
that luncheon, for all but the younger children, 
must embrace a ie'ff of the thousand and one costly 
dishes without which life is deemed tame and 
wretched. In short, four tables, three of them 
with their various and often costly array, including 
always strong coffee or tea, or both, must be set 
for a family of only nine persons each forenoon ; 
and nearly or quite as many every afternoon ; and 



HOW TO BEGIN REFORMATION. 375 

all this, and the waste which accompanied it — for 
most of the remnants were given or thrown away — 
Was charged on poor Miss R., and her reformed 
system. No wonder the vegetable system, and 
Miss R. with it, fell into disrepute, and received a 
thousand maledictions, as iniquitous and expensive, 
when it was thus made a scape goat to carry off- 
the sins of the old system and the new, as well as 
the mongrel system, which here grew out of both. 

But how obvious that the vegetable system itself 
was not in fault ! How wrong to say, as Mrs. J. is 
inclined to do, that it is a thousand times as en- 
slaving to the mistress and domestics of a family as 
the old one ; and that though they neither bake 
nor wash, it takes up all her own time, and that 
of her domestic and elder daughter, to cook fbr 
nine persons ! 

Let us look at facts. Many a time do the 
family — Mrs. J. and the domestic excepted — make 
their three daily meals of good plain food, such as 
bread of all the various kinds, rice, hommony, pud- 
dings, potatoes, apples and milk, and molasses, at 
an expense of only fifty cents a day, or three dol- 
lars and a half a week, for the seven persons ; and 
the female labor necessarily connected therewith 
cannot possibly exceed two or three hours a day. 
IVaj, three hours a day of female labor, and four 



376 THE- YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

dollars and a half a week, or two hundred and 
thirty-four dollars a year, are amply sufficient to 
feed in princely abundance such a family of nine 
persons — six of them equal to adults, and three 
children. I could prove this by citing numerous 
cases of undeniable authenticity — with several of 
which I have been myself intimately acquainted. 
Bread, good bread, and milk, are, in cities, among 
the more costly dishes of the rational sort ; and 
these, in reasonable quantity, do not cost an indi- 
vidual more than seventy -five cents a week. 

But when the vegetable system of living, or any 
other system, falls into bad hands, as it often does, 
we have little else to expect, but what we see 
verified and illustrated in the foregoing history. 
Truth is destined, after all, to creep, ere it can 
walk upright. 

Now I. do not advise any one to take a single 
step in the work of reform in diet or house-keep^- 
ing, till thoroughly convinced of the importance 
of that step. But when a house-keeper has an 
abiding conviction of the importance of reform, 
and has the approbation of the husband — ^which, 
if she is sincere in her belief, and truly conscien 
tious, she can usually obtain — ^let her go forward. 
Let her not fear to do suddenly what she fully 
believes she ought to do. And as for what she 



HOW TO BEGIN REFORMATION. 377 

only half believes to be necessary, let that, for the 
present, be deferred. 

Suppose a conviction that hot flour bread is in- 
jurious. Let it be at once banished from the 
table. Let bread be used which is either a day or 
two old, or is coarse. Bread made of coarse, un- 
bolted meal is less injurious, taken hot, than fine 
flour bread. 

A family commencing thus will perhaps have no 
idea of going any farther at first. But presently 
the judicious and thinking house-keeper, with the 
consent and encouragement of her husband, dis- 
covering as she has the evil of other hot things, 
begins to omit them also, one by one. 

First comes a quantity of hasty pudding, per- 
haps, which is not smoking. The younger mem- 
bers of the family may wonder why — not being fully 
in the secret. But it goes down. Next come 
Indian cakes which are partly cold. These are a 
little doubtful to the family, at first ; but if well 
made, and not at first too cold, will go down very 
well. 

In the mean time, a conviction has been fasten- 
ing slowly upon the house-keeper's mind, that hot 
drinks are not beneficial. The conviction deepens. 
The task of preparing them is quite laborious, and 
she is willing to be freed from it. But can she use 
cold water ? And will her husband be comfortable 



378 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

with It ? She consults him. For the children she 
has no fears ; for herself, few. She has faith, and 
her faith is becoming strong. Her husband at 
length seconds her. He believes. The array of 
tea cups and coffee bowls, and pots and kettles, is 
banished ; and the pitcher and tumblers are sub- 
stituted. 

Next, perhaps, comes up the subject of flesh- 
eating. Is so much flesh and fish necessary ? Do 
my children and myself need meat twice a day, 
and does my husband need it three times ? On 
reflection and consultation, meat is abandoned, 
except at dinner. 

Thus the work of reform goes on. Not quite 
so rapidly as the time passes while I am relating 
it, to be sure ; but something is gained every 
month. And what is of more importance, the 
conviction of the necessity of reform is deepening 
and strengthening, at every step, in what arithme- 
ticians would call geometrical progression. 

The banishment of all hot and stimulating 
drinks, of a part of our meat, and of hot bread 
and puddings, will make the heat and unnatural 
stimulus of many things that remain, stand out in 
bolder relief. The propriety of these will now 
begin to be doubted. Pepper, and spice, and 
vinegar, and mustard, and ketchup, and cinnamon, 
and the whole tribe of crude, acrid and aromatic 



HOW TO BEGIN REFORMATION. 379 

substances, pickles, perhaps, not excepted, one 
after another, is dropped, and the quantity of salt 
which had been used is much diminished. 

And now come the greasy substances. Fat 
meat is first rejected ; next, the suet of puddings ; 
next, gravies ; next, the melted butter, as it is 
called, for fish ; and next, perhaps, butter itself. 
After these, buttered pancakes or fritters, whether 
of wheat, Indian or buckwheat, waffles, he. So 
strongly interwoven in our very natures, however, 
is the use of butter, that we generally cling to that 
as with a dying grasp. And consequently, it is T5ne 
of the last things which even an enlightened and 
conscientious house-keeper will venture to banish. 
But go it must, and will, finally. 

By this time, all meat will become doubtful, and 
will be abandoned — and perhaps cheese ; and milk 
and all other liquid foods will be used sparingly. 
Mixed dishes will begin at length to be proscribed. 
Sausages are already abandoned ; but mince pies, 
hash, seed cakes, plum puddings, plum cakes, and 
all shortened pie crust, and semi-solid or watery 
substances, soon follow in their train ! . And as the 
taste becomes simplified, the desire for drink, before 
supposed to be natural, now gradually disappears. 
The tumbler of water begins to stand untouched 
till we have done eating, before it is drank off. 
At last, the fashion of not drinking so far prevails. 



380 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

that no drinking vessels are introduced to the table. 
Finally, the variety at the same meal begins to 
diminish. Instead of several courses of food, one 
begins to suffice ; and instead of a dozen articles 
in this one course, half a dozen and ultimately 
two or three, or perhaps one, begins to be used. 
And instead of hot things, those are preferred 
which are temperate ; and instead of swallowing 
them just from the oven, the pot or the kettle, 
they are required to have suitable age. And 
instead of having everything as soft as pap, the 
house-keeper at length learns to have everything, 
though well cooked, in a condition to require a 
good deal of mastication. 

There is, however, one little piece of advice 
which I would urge upon all persons who are 
resolved on the work of dietetic reform. It is, 
never to use food which is more highly concen- 
trated or more highly seasoned, when that which 
is less so will satisfy you. Thus, if you can relish 
and enjoy an article without molasses or sugar, eat 
it so. When you have once added the molasses, 
you cannot expect it any longer to relish without 
it ; nor will anything else which is plain relish at 
the same meal. But he who begins a meal of 
plain food without seasonings, will find, after a few 
mouthfuls, that uncloying sweetness which he will 
in vain look for anywhere, after he has spoiled the 



HOW TO BEGIN REFORMATION. 381 

keen edge of his appetite by concentrated or over- 
seasoned dishes. 

Indeed, to secure the highest amount of gusta- 
tory enjoyment, during a whole Hfe, eat always 
the mildest, simplest food, with which you can feel 
at all satisfied. What you gain, in enjoyment, by 
the use of concentrations or condiments to-day, 
you more than lose in the end, by the effect it has 
to blunt or benumb the keenness of sensibility in 
the organs of taste, smell, &;c. 

I have not intended, by the remarks of the last 
paragraphs, to prescribe a course for any individual 
to pursue ; but only to say that this is something 
like one course among thousands, which might be 
pursued by a truly awakened house-keeper, who 
is anxious to reform herself and her family. It 
may take years — perhaps six, or eight, or ten of 
them, to complete the work ; but if the true spirit 
of reform — the determination to do what it is 
known ought to be done — has really possessed the 
mind of a house-keeper — if, in one word, she is a 
real christian — and if she has the right sort of a 
husband, she will never again slumber or sleep till 
she rises above doubtful ground, and finds all her 
household in the use of such things as she believes 
are best for thera. 

To such a house-keeper as I have all along 
been supposing — one who is awake, and has 



382 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

caught the desire for improvement — and to such 
an one alone, will the chapters of this volume be 
of much value. To those who are inquiring, and 
who are determined to think for themselves on this 
as well as on all other subjects, I flatter, myself I 
have rendered some service ; but to those who 
wish me to prescribe for them a certain routine, 
which they are too indolent or too indifferent to find 
for themselves, or to vary from, when found, to 
meet existing changes of circumstances, this book 
will probably be nearly useless. 

Such persons as I have last described — those 
who demand details instead of principles — would 
like very well to read a book which should tell 
them precisely what to eat, and how much, and 
what to get for others. They would gladly know 
what I eat, and how and why I eat it. Now I 
should have no objection to giving such informa- 
tion in its proper place, and time, and manner — 
not, however, for any other person to follow exactly. 
But the rational house-keeper does not demand it. 
She is satisfied with principles, suitably illustrated. 

I think it probable, however, that some house- 
keepers, when they read the present and foregoing 
chapters, will be led to exclaim — such things have 
been said — " Why, in this way you would reform 
us out of everything ; you leave us nothing. This 
coming down to plain bread and potatoes, or 



HOW TO BKGIN KEFOKMATION. 383 

scarcely anything but bread and potatoes, cannot 
be required of us. There is a sort of coarseness, 
we might say baldness, about it, to which we are 
sure he who placed us in a world of variety never 
meant to compel us. We cannot go with you, 
even if our households would." 

This objection is often made by house-keepers ; 
whether with a view to suppress the truth and 
apologize for their pampered appetites, I will not 
undertake to say. But I will say, that more hus- 
bands and fathers are, in general, ready for reform, 
than mothers and house-keepers. Perhaps the 
reason is, that more of the latter were brought up 
in band-boxes, cradled on down, and fed on pap, 
than of the former. It must not be withheld, 
however, that when a female has once imbibed the 
true spirit of reform, she makes a better missionary 
in the family and neighborhood, than an individual 
of the other sex. So that there is still room for 
much hope. 

But let us see how much truth there is in the 
common charge, that we would compel people to 
live on bread and water, or bread and potatoes ; 
and thus deprive them of the good things God has 
given us. 

From farinaceous substances and fruits men- 
tioned in the foregoing chapters, may be collected 
the following list of simple articles of food, which 



384 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

are very far from being prohibited : — viz., loaf 
bread of wheat meal, unleavened or wafer cakes, 
brown bread, crackers, loaf rye bread, loaf Indian 
bread, Indian cake, hulled corn, parched corn, 
hommony, wheat mush, rye mush, potatoes, apples, 
pears, peaches, apricots, potatoe bread, apple bread, 
rice, rice bread, bread pudding, sago pudding, 
tapioca pudding, arrow-root pudding, plain ginger- 
bread, plain toast, milk, gruel, beans, peas, ches- 
nuts, figs, sweet potatoes, beets, turnips, parsnips, 
carrots, squashes, pumpkins, melons, cabbages, 
strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, whoitleber- 
vles, gooseberries, grapes, cherries, and the various 
kinds of plums. 

In view of this list, of over fifty articles, that do 
not come under the ban of proscription, will it still 
be said that my plan reduces people to mere bread 
and water, or to roots and water, as some will have 
it ? Surely not. 

But this is not all, properly speaking. I have 
here mentioned only six or seven kinds of loaf 
bread ; viz., bread of unbolted wheat meal, rye 
bread, brown bread, Indian bread, potatoe bread, 
apple bread and rice bread ; whereas, there are a 
great many other varieties of wheat as well as 
Indian and rye bread, which are alluded to in this 
work as comparatively excellent ; and a great 
many mixtures and combinations of wheat, rye, 



HOW TO BEGIN BEFORMATION. 385 

Indian, and other bread-stuffs, which are not men- 
tioned, but whose excellence must be obvious. 
So that if any one were disposed to eat but a single 
article at the same meal, and partake of three 
meals a day, he might have a different dish at each 
meal for about three weeks in summer, and for 
about two in winter. 

But when we come to combine two articles, the 
variety is very greatly increased. Take milk, for 
example — and by combining the foregoing sub- 
stances with it, (for they are nearly two thirds 
of them agreeable to most persons when com- 
bined,) you have a list of thirty-five more new 
dishes. By their combination — to some extent — 
with gruel, you have perhaps twenty more. 

Again, the combination of each particular sort 
of bread and of cold mush, corn, rice, &c., with 
nearly every kind of fruit, would result in at least 
three hundred more of what I should call new 
dishes. Thus as often as you can join a particular 
fruit to loaf bread, you form a new dish, as apples 
and bread, figs and bread, strawberries and bread, 
&c. Every one may compute for herself; but I 
judge there would be in this way over three hun- 
dred new dishes. 

But this is not all. The various kinds of bread 
and other solid substances may be combined with 
each other to form another large list of new dishes. 
25 



386 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Thus, bread and potatoes, Indian cake and pota- 
toes, bread and turnips, bread and beets, bread 
pudding and squashes, &ic., form very happy com- 
binations, especially when one which is highly 
nutritious, as rice or beans, is coupled with one 
which is rather wanting in nutriment, as turnips, 
potatoes, &£c. ; and one which requires litde masti- 
cation, as rice or turnips, with one which requires 
a great deal of it, as wafer cakes, or ship bread, or 
crackers. I think that in this way we should form 
another list of about one hundred more new dishes. 

But once more. If we admit molasses or sugar, 
which in small quantity are not deemed very ob- 
jectionable, the combination of one of these with 
some twenty or nearly twenty of the list of simple 
articles, would add so many more new dishes. 
The admittance of cheese as a condiment, or a 
little fresh butter to be spread on the drier articles 
of food, would add to the catalogue in the same 
manner. 

Thus, as we see, by combining two articles — 
and only two — at the same meal, and without the 
admission of more than two or three objectionable 
things — the molasses, the honey and the cheese— 
we have a list of above five hundred various 
dishes. If we even throw aside the objectionable 
articles just mentioned, the number would be 
nmrlij five hundred. Let it be remembered, I 



HOW TO BEGIN REFORMATION. 387 

repeat it, that we have all this either from single 
allowable articles, or from the combination of only 
two of these articles. When we combine three 
of these simples, and ring as many changes on these 
as we can, the variety is almost endless. 

Dr. Cheyne, who commended a course of living, 
similar to that which I recommend, more than a 
century ago, insisted that a vegetable diet involved 
as great a variety of dishes as a mixed one. 

When the charge was brought to him of want 
of variety in the vegetable system, he very proba- 
bly replied to it in the following manner, as in 
another part of this volume. It is not for you, he 
would naturally say, to talk to others about want 
of variety in their diet. You are the persons — 
and not the vegetable eaters — against whom such 
a charge can best be sustained. How few of your 
meals do not savor of butter, and salt, and pepper? 
Is not your table perpetually set out with these, 
or with dishes in which they are incorporated, and 
with an array of tea or coffee cups, and tumblers ? 
The truth is, that you have no real variety at all. 
There are certain things which are always at your 
tables, let what will come ; and without these 
things forever there to give savor and odor, you 
would be miserable. It is the vegetable eater 
who enjoys nature's genuine variety, and not you. 
Now — to-day — I have, for my breakfast, a rich 



388 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

bowl of lye bread and milk ; at dinner I sball 
have, perhaps, a fine dish of pea soup ; at supper, 
some rice, pure and white as the driven snow, and 
unmixed with any condiment. To-morrow, for 
breakfast, some hommony and apples ; at dinner, 
a platter of dry mealy potatoes ; at supper, some 
wafer cakes, light, and dry, and wholesome. The 
third day, for breakfast, wheat meal bread, toasted, 
with a bowl of strawberries ; for dinner, a sago 
pudding ; for supper, stale, but sweet flour bread. 
The fourth day, for breakfast, sweet potatoes and 
brown bread toasted, or rather dried ; for dinner, 
corn bread ; for supper, wheat and Indian bread ; — 
and so on. Here are a dozen meals — of the best 
and richest food, and yet an entire variety ; and the 
bill of fare might be much extended without mar- 
ring its simplicity. But if milk were to accom- 
pany every meal, or at least be incorporated, in 
greater or less quantity, with every dish, or if there 
were any other sort of things or condiments which 
must grace the table at every one of my meals, 
be present what else may, there would be no per- 
fect or complete variety — there would be, on the 
contrary, so far as these ever present articles of 
food or furniture are concerned, a tiresome mo- 
notony. 

Thus, I say, might Dr. C. return the charge 
which is forever made in these days, and probably 



HOW TO BEGIN REFORMATION. 389 

was in his — and with good reason and truth. 
Nothing is plainer than that there is no such thing 
known as true variety at meals, in fashionable life. 
All is monotony — ^the monotony of spicy, salted or 
greasy mixtures. 

And as to drinks, in the case of those who, 
though they are willing to relinquish tea and coffee, 
are determined to drink something or other which 
is hot, we leave them chocolate, cocoa, (or shells,) 
corn coffee, bread coffee, wheat coffee, rye coffee, 
chesnut coffee, and a multitude of other drinks 
of the same general class. Multitudes, when they 
first began to abandon narcotic drink, have sub- 
stituted, for a time, simple warm water, with milk 
and sugar in it ; and after continuing this awhile, 
have proceeded to cool milk and water, sweetened 
water, Sec. 

Let us then hear no more of the nakedness or 
baldness of the vegetable system ; of the want 
of variety which it involves, and of our slighting 
the good gifts of God ; especially from those who, 
by making everything smell or taste of pepper, 
butter, vinegar, salt, Sic, reduce all things to a 
strange sameness — and who, by cooking everything 
in such a way as to destroy its natural taste, if not its 
natural properties, do in reality set aside nearly all 
the Creator's gifts, to substitute inventions of their 



390 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEK. 

own, and introduce thereby ten thousand forms 
of disease, from simple flatulence and heart-bum to 
consumption and cholera, and cause ten thousand 
premature deaths for one which is according to 
nature or the intentions of nature's God. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 

Various kinds of bread. Puddings, Cakes. Rice. Corn 
and hommony. Porridge. Pies. Jellies, &c. Yeast. 
Beans and peas. Potatoes. Various articles. 

It now remains for me to present a chapter of 
the most approved recipes, for the benefit of those 
who wish to have their practice a Uttle in advance 
of their knowledge. The better way, however, 
is, for every house-keeper to originate her own 
recipes. Indeed, it is not amiss to say, that many 
of the following were originated by the various 
house-keepers to whom I am indebted for them. 
And, according to a favorite saying, what has 
been done can be done again. All that is needed 
for the purpose, is an abundance of plain, good 
sense, and a love for the profession. 

My plan has been to present a variety of the 
recipes — some more, others less simple. The 
reader will of course be able to mdke a selection, 
adapted to her own stage of progress. I hope 
the list will be found sufficiently extended and 



392 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

complete. I might have added several hundred 
others, but I was unwilling to devote more space to 
matter of so little comparative importance. 



VARIOUS KINDS OF BREAD. 

Unbolted Wheat Meal Bread. — For the 
sponge, take one quart of water blood warm, or 
about 100° F., add one tea spoonful of salt, stir in 
coarse wheat meal till it becomes a thick batter, 
then if it is kept at about a temperature of 80 or 
90^, it will ferment sufficiently in from four to six 
hours ; or if prepared in the evening, let it remain 
at about 60° till next morning ; then add two or 
three quarts of warm water, with a suitable propor- 
tion of the wheat meal ; mould it, and put it into 
pans ; and in about one hour it will rise sufficiently 
for the oven. In this way, with proper care and 
experience, the best of bread may be made, without 
any pearlash, yeast, molasses or milk. Some use a 
little saleratus, to prevent all acidity in the bread, 
but that can be avoided by having the dough in the 
oven before the fermentation proceeds too far. 

Another. — ^Pour warm water with the yeast 
into the meal, and make a thick batter ; let it rise ; 
then stir in more meal ; knead it, and put it into 
pans ; let it rise again, and then bake it. 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 393 

Another. — The meal, together with a suitable 
quantity of yeast to ferment — should be moulded 
up thin and put into the baking pans immediately, 
in about one half the quantity you expect the 
size of the loaf after being baked. As soon as it 
is in the pans, put it in a place of moderate heat, 
and let it stand undisturbed until fermented (raised) 
sufficiently to bake ; then put it into an oven of 
rather more intense heat than would be necessary 
to bake superfine flour bread . Miserable bread is 
often made from the best of wheat meal ; and it is 
because it is raised, and then moulded and baked 
in an oven without sufficient heat. Moulding after 
raising spoils it. — Unbolted flour should never be 
sifted to make good bread ; it spoils it. 

Another. — Three quarts of wheat meal, one 
large tea cup of yeast, one large tea cup of brown 
sugar or molasses, one table spoonful of salt, and one 
tea spoonful of saleratus. Knead it very thoroughly, 
and bake it in small loaves. 

Wheat and Indian. — To twelve quarts of un- 
bolted wheat meal, coarsely ground, put in three 
quarts of Indian meal, scalded, and mix it well with 
the wheat meal ; add half a pint of yeast ; mix and 
knead it thoroughly ; let it rise ; then, with but a little 
kneading, and a little dry flour, put it in pans for the 



394 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

oven. Be careful to put it in the oven as soon as 
it rises, as it becomes acid sooner than other flour. 
If a little potatoe be added, it gives it additional 
sweetness and richness. — Make it in the same way 
without Indian meal. 

Bkown Bread. — Six quarts of meal will make 
two good sized loaves of brown bread. Some like 
it half Indian and half rye meal ; others prefer it 
one third Indian and two thirds rye. Many mix 
their brown bread the night before they bake it, 
but this is unnecessary ; and it is more likely to 
sour — particularly in summer. If you mix it the 
night before, you must not put in more than half 
the yeast I am about to mention, unless the weather 
is intensely cold. 

The meal should be sifted separately. Put the 
Indian in your bread pan, sprinkle a Httle salt into 
it, and wet it thoroughly with scalding water. Stir 
it while you are scalding it. Be sure and have 
hot water enough ; for Indian absorbs a great deal 
of water. When it is cool, pour in your rye ; add 
two gills of lively yeast, and mix it with water as 
stiff as you can knead it. Let it stand an hour 
and a half, in a cool place in summer, and on the 
hearth in winter. It should be put into a very 
hot oven, and baked three or four hours. It is 
much better for remaining in the oven over night. 



KECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 395 

Rice Bkead. — ^Boil a pint of rice soft ; add a 
pint of yeast and three quarts of rice flour ; put it 
in a tin or earthen vessel until it has risen suffi- 
ciently ; divide it into three parts ; then bake 
it as other bread, and you will have three large 
loaves. 

Flour AND Rice. — Boil a pound of rice in water 
till quite tender ; pour off the water, and add the 
rice, before it is cold, to six pounds of flour. Add the 
usual quantity of yeast, a little more than the usual 
quantity of salt, and as much lukewarm water 
(taking the water the rice was boiled in) as will 
make it into dough. It will require the same time 
to rise as rice bread, and is baked in the same 
way. 

Plain Corn Bread. — Six pints of meal, one 
table spoonful of salt, four pints of water, thor- 
oughly mixed with the hand, and baked in oblong 
rolls about two inches thick. Use as much dough 
for one roll as can be conveniently shaped in the 
hand. Many persons use hot water ; in winter it 
is certainly best. The bread is better to be made 
half an hour or more before it is baked. The 
oven must be tolerably hot when the dough is put 
in. All kinds of corn bread require a hotter oven, 
and to be baked quicker than flour bread. 



396 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Light Corn Bread. — Stir four pints of meal 
into three pints of tepid water ; add one large 
tea spoonful of salt ; let it rise five or six hours ; 
then stir it up with the hand and bake it, in a brisk 
oven. Another method is, to make mush, and 
before it grows cold, stir in half a pint of meal. 
Let it rise, and then bake it as the first. 

Clap Bread. — Mix well some oat meal and 
water, of about the same consistence as common 
dough ; then roll it into cakes as thin as possible ; 
bake them on a stone or iron plate of a moderate 
heat over the fire ; when baked on both sides, set 
them on one edge before the fire till perfectly dry. 
This bread will continue good many weeks, if kept 
in a dry place. 

Apple Bread. — A very light, pleasant bread 
is made in France, of a mixture of apples, (when 
pared, cored and baked, or stewed with a very 
little water,) and flour, in the proportion of one 
part of apples to two of flour, employing the usual 
quantity of purified yeast, which must be beat up 
in the flour with the warm pulp of the apples. The 
sponge may then be considered set. Let it rise 
eight or ten hours, then make it up, and bake it 
in long loaves like rolls. Little or no water is 
necessary. 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 397 

PoTATOE Bread. — To fourteen pounds of good 
sound flour, either coarse or fine, take five pounds 
of potatoes, pared and washed veiy clean ; boil 
them in a proper quantity of water till quite soft ; 
mash them, and rub them through a wire sieve into 
the middle of the flour, adding water sufficient to 
make it of a proper heat, and some salt ; when 
well mixed, add a due proportion of yeast ; let it 
rise an hour or more in the sponge ; and then 
knead it well. Let it stand to rise an hour or 
longer, according to the quantity, and bake it in 
the usual way. 

PUDDINGS. 

Hasty Pudding. — Mix five or six spoonfuls 
of sifted meal in half a pint of cold water ; stir 
it into a quart of water while boiling ; season it 
with salt to your taste ; and from time to time 
sprinkle in dry meal, stirring it thoroughly. It 
should boil half or three quarters of an hour. It may 
be eaten in various ways, but is best alone, or with 
milk. Indian meal or rye may be used. It should 
not be made thick ; let the boiling thicken it. 

Samp Pudding. — Boil the samp well till dry, 
add milk, a little sweetening, and a quantity of 
sweet apples sliced thinly ; let it be well baked. 



398 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Newly Invented Pudding. — Take some good 
sweet apples ; wash and core, but do not pare 
them ; chop them about as fine as cranberries, put 
them in a kettle, and put in just enough of good 
milk to cover them, and if you choose, add a Mttle 
salt — some even add a little cinnamon or ginger. 
Next, proceed to scald them, but without burning 
them, and while scalding them, stir in fine Indian 
meal enough to form the milk into a thin batter ; 
then put the mass into a deep pan, set it into an 
oven or stove, well heated, and bake it about six 

hours. 

» 

Plain Indian Pudding. — One quart of Indian 
meal, one pint of boiling water, one tea cup of 
molasses, and a little salt. Boil it four hours. 

Another. — Boil one quart of milk ; while boiling 
pour it upon one tea cup full of Indian meal ; mix 
it well, add molasses to your taste, and bake it 
three hours at least, with a strong heat. 

Boiled Indian Pudding. — Boil one quart of 
milk ; stir in, while hot, one pint of Indian meal, 
or enough to make it a thin mush ; have ready a 
handfiil of dried, sweet apple, swelled and scalded 
in a little water ; add a little salt, spice and butter ; 
put it into a pan, and boil it five or six hours. 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 399 

Another. — Take three pints of Indian meal, 
scalded in boiling water, and made thin ; boil it six 
hours. 

Baked Indian Pudding. — One quart of milk, 
one pint of water, and one pint of Indian meal. 
Add salt, molasses, &tc., to suit the taste. 

Another. — Scald two quarts of skimmed milk ; 
stir in one pint of Indian meal, or enough to make 
a thin mush ; add a little salt, a tea cup full of 
molasses, a little cinnamon, or any spice you Hke. 
Bake three hours. 

HoMMONY Pudding.— Take one quart of milk, 
half a pint of Indian meal ; stir them well together ; 
then add one pint and a half of cooked homraony. 
Bake it in a moderate oven. 

Sweet Apple Pudding. — One pint of scalding 
milk, half a pint of Indian meal, six sweet apples, 
cut in small pieces ; add a little salt, and bake it 
three hours. 

Common Rice Pudding. — Wash and pick half 
a pound of rice very clean, put it in a dish with 
two quarts of milk, with or without sugar. Bake 
it in a moderate oven. 



400 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Rice Pudding, with Apples. — Boil six ounces 
of rice in a pint of milk till it is soft, then fill a 
dish about half full of apples pared and cored ; 
sweeten ; put the rice over them as a crust, and 
bake it. 

Rice Pudding. — To one quart of good milk, 
add one tea cup full of rice, sweetened, well 
baked, with no eggs, butter or spices. It may be 
eaten with good molasses or sugar, or is good with- 
out either. 

Another. — One quart of milk, a tea cup half full 
of rice ; four or five pleasant sour apples, a little 
salt, and sweeten to your taste. Bake it one hour. 

Boiled Rice Pudding. — ^Boil one half pound 
of rice in a small quantity of water ; when tender, 
add one coffee cup of milk, with a table spoonful 
of sugar and salt ; simmer or bake half an hour. 

Bread Pudding. — Slice bread thinly, and put 
it in milk, with a little sweetening ; add a little 
flour, and bake one hour and a half. The milk 
may be cold for all these puddings, when mixed. 

Another. — Take a loaf of white bread, cut a 
hole in the bottom, add as much new milk as it 
will soak up ; tie it in a cloth, and boil it an hour. 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 401 

Another. — Take three pints of milk, one pound 
of baker's bread, four large spoonfuls of sugar, 
and three of molasses ; put in a layer of bread cut 
thin, then a few raisins, then bread, &c. ; pour 
on the milk and sweetening. If baked one hour 
and a half, it is sufficient. If boiled, two or three 
hours. Boil it in a tin pudding boiler. 

Cracker Pudding. — To one quart of milk, 
add four thick crackers, made of coarse wheat, and 
broken in pieces, a little sugar and a little flour, 
and bake it one hour and a half. 

Flour Pudding. — Take mush made of the 
coarse flour, and put in milk ; mix it well, and add 
sweetening ; bake it slightly. 

PoTATOE Pudding. — Two pounds of potatoes 
boiled and mashed, one pound of wheat meal and 
a little salt ; mix well together into a stiff paste ; 
tie it in a wet cloth, dusted with flour. Boil it two 
hours. 

Apple Pudding. — Take unbolted wheat meal, 
wet it with buttermilk to a sufficient stiffiiess to 
roll out ; take a tin pudding boiler, put in a layer 
of crust and a layer of apple till it is filled. 
Boil it three hours. » 

26 



402 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Tapioca Pudding. — Take one coffee cup full 
of tapioca to one quart of milk ; boil half the milk 
and pour it on the tapioca ; let it stand half an 
hour ; then add the remainder of the milk. Sweeten 
it to your taste, and it is ready for baking. 

Sago pudding is made in a similar manner. 



CAKES. 

Plain Indian Cake. — One quart of Indian 
meal, a^ little salt, one pint of water ; bake it thin. 

The same proportions mixed and let stand 
twenty-four or forty-eight hours, and baked thick, 
will be light. 

Indian or " Johnny " Cake. — Take one pound 
of Indian meal and one pint of water. Roll it 
out thin, and bake it dry. 

Another. — Take yellow Indian meal, wet it 
with good milk, sweeten it, and add a little pul- 
verized potatoe. Raise it with yeast, and bake it 
thoroughly, in small round pans, indenting it deeply 
as you would cut the cake when done. It should 
be eaten cold 

Another. — Two cups of Indian meal, one table | 
spoonful of molasses, two cups of milk, a little I 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 403 

salt, a handful of flour, mixed up thin, and poured 
into a buttered bake-kettle, hung over the fire, 
uncovered, until you can bear your finger upon it, 
and then set down before the fire. Bake it half an 
hour. 

Another. — One pint of sour milk, three cups of 
meal, one cup of flour, four table spoonfuls of mo- 
lasses, one tea spoonful of saleratus, and a little 
salt. — Indian cake may be made of water instead 
of milk, but it requires about half a cup more of 
Indian meal. 

Indian Sponge Cake. — Take three cups of 
Indian meal, three cups of milk, and one cup of 
flour. It should be mixed one day previous to 
baking, that it may have time to rise. 

Rice and Indian Cake.— Boil half a pound of 
rice in two quarts of water, until it is quite soft ; 
and while boiling hot, add enough of Indian meal 
to make it sufficiently stiff to form into cakes. Put 
it into a shallow tin pan, and bake it before the fire. 
It may be made an inch in thickness, or thinner, as 
may be fancied. The cakes should be made from 
ten to twelve hours before they are baked, as they 
are much sweeter for being mixed so long before- 
hand. 



404 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Unbolted Wheat Meal Cake. — Knead the 
unbolted wheat flour with cold water, stiff enough 
to roll on a tin sheet, then prick it, and bake it in 
any way most convenient. It does very well baked 
before the fire, and made about the thickness of an 
unleavened cracker. A little scalded Indian meal 
might, by some, be thought to be an improvement, 
as a substitute for shortening. 

Wheat Cake. — Take three pints of wheat 
meal, one pint and a half of buttermilk, and a tea 
spoonful of saleratus. Roll and cut it into round 
cakes, and then bake them by a quick fire. 

Plain Cake. — One cup of molasses, one cup of 
good milk or cream, half a tea spoonful of pearlash, 
and coarse wheaten meal to make a soft paste. 

Cup Cake. — Two cups of cream or milk, two 
of sugar, two of unbolted wheat meal, one of rice 
flour, and a tea spoonful of salt. Beat it thoroughly, 
put it into cups, and bake it half an hour. 

Bread Cake. — One cup of cream, two cups 
of sugar, three cups of risen bread, (dough,) one 
egg, half a pound of raisins, stoned and chopped, a 
little saleratus ; mix it well together ; if too soft, add 
a little flour, and bake it about an hour and a half. 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 405 

Rice Johnny Cake. — To three spoonfuls of 
soft boiled rice add a tea cup full of water or milk ; 
then add six spoonfuls of flour, and a little salt. 
Baked as johnny cake. 

Imitation Buckwheat Cake.— Scald a tea 
cup full of ground rice in water enough to make a 
batter. When cool enough for yeast, stir in two 
tea cups full of unbolted wheat meal, a little yeast 
and salt, and let it rise. Bake it in thin cakes, on 
a griddle. 

Loaf Cake. — Take one cup of milk, one cup 
of cream, one cup of sugar, one tea spoonful of 
saleratus, one egg, some cinnamon, nutmeg and cur- 
rants, and make a thick batter of the best unbolted 
wheat flour. Bake in an oven, not too quick, but 
hot enough to raise it without burning. 

Graham Wafers. — Take one quart of wheat 
meal, one half pint of Indian meal, and a little 
salt. Mix them with water, roll them out thin, 
and bake them very hard. Add a little sugar, if 
you choose. 

Biscuits. — A pound and a half of flour made 
wet with equal quantities of milk and water mod- 
erately warm, made stiff, and rolled out very thin ; 



406 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

cut them to any size you please, prick them, and 
bake them in a moderate oven, on a tin. No flour 
to be put on the tins or biscuits. 

Sweet Crackers. — One tea cup of coarse 
wheaten meal, one of sour milk or buttermilk, 
three fourths of a tea cup of sugar, half a tea 
spoonful of pearlash ; made hard, rolled thin, and 
well baked. 

Water Crackers. — Wheat meal, wet with 
nothing but water, and pulled apart with the hand, 
or cut in pieces and rolled as thin as possible, and 
well baked. 

RICE. 

Steamed Rice.^ — Wash your rice well, rubbing 
it through three or four waters, put it into boiling 
water, with salt, let it boil twelve minutes only ; 
then drain off the water, uncover the vessel, place 
it before the fire, minding to turn it round often, 
till the moisture has all evaporated. The rice will 
then be whole, dry and tender, with the additional 
benefit of being much better for the stomach than 
when reduced to a pulp in water. 

Boiled Rice. — In its common form, is picked 
and washed, and soaked an hour or two in water 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 407 

enough to cover it ; slowly boiled in the same 
water until it becomes quite soft ; a little salt added. 
It is often boiled in milk instead of water. A tea 
cup full will make nearly a quart of pudding. To 
have the kernels remain whole, put the rice into 
boiling water. 

Another. — Boil one quart of water, then put in 
a coffee cup full of rice ; let it boil eleven minutes ; 
then pour off the water and cover it so as to retain 
the steam ; then let it stand two hours on a warm 
hearth. 

Another. — To one pint of rice add three pints 
of water ; as soon as it boils, stir in a little salt, 
and boil it slowly. 



CORN AND HOMMONY. 

Boiled Corn. — Take two quarts of corn, put 
it into three quarts of boiling water ; let it soak 
over night ; in the morning, change the water ; and 
when it has boiled six hours, take it out and rub it 
well in a number of waters, till it is thoroughly 
clean ; then boil it till the hulls are soft. The 
hulls will not all come off, but they will be boiled 
sufficient for eating. 



408 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

Hulled Corn. — Take four ounces of potash 
and two quarts of water, and boil them ; then put in 
six quarts of corn, and boil it one hour, and stir it 
well while boiling. Take out the corn and wash 
it thoroughly till the potash is all out of the corn ; 
then put in fresh water and boil it till it is tender. 

Boiling Hommony. — To two quarts of hom- 
mony pour four quarts of water, stir it up well that 
the hulls may rise ; then pour oiF the water through 
a sieve in order to separate the hulls. Turn the 
same water again into the hommony, stir it well, 
and pour it off again in the same way several 
times. Pour back the water, add a little salt, and, 
if necessary, a little more water, and hang it over a 
slow fire to boil. It will need stirring often, if not 
constantly, during the first hour. Let it boil from 
three to six hours. 

Another. — Hommony should be soaked over 
night, and boiled in the same water, as much of its 
sweetness is lost by changing the water. Soft 
water is best to boil hommony, as well as for beans, 
peas, and for everything else that requires boiling 
three or four hours. Hommony should be kept 
boiling, but slowly, to prevent scorching ; also 
avoid too much water, as this is apt to make it 
tasteless ; but if done with just water enough, the 
true taste is preserved. 



RECIPKS FOR PLAIN COOKING. 409 

Beating Hommony. — Soak the hommony com 
ten minutes in boiling water ; then take the corn 
up and put it into the hommony mortar, and beat it 
antil the hulls are all separated from the com. 
Once or twice, while beating, take it out of the 
mortar and fan it ; that is, throw it up on a tray or 
bowl so as to allow the hulls to fly off. When 
sufficiently beaten, fan it until all the hulls are out. 

Preparing Hommony. — It must be thoroughly 
washed in cold water, rubbing it with the hands ; 
then wash in the same way in warm water, chang- 
ing the water several times. Put it into a large 
pot of cold water, and boil steadily eight or ten 
hours, keeping it closely covered. Add hot water 
frequently while boiling, otherwise the hommony 
will burn and be dark colored. If it is put on the 
first thing in the morning, and kept briskly boiling, 
it will be ready for dinner at two o'clock. 

But the usual mode is to boil hommony twice a 
week, and put it into a wooden or stone vessel, 
and set it in a cool place to prevent its becoming 
musty. When wanted for use, take the quantity 
necessary for breakfast or dinner ; let it become hot ; 
put in the hommony and mash it well, adding 
some salt ; when well heated it is ready for the 
table. 



410 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 



PORRIDGE. 

Rice Porridge. — To three quarts of boiling 
water add one pint of rice and three of milk, when 
over the fire, and scald it well. 

Ground Rice Porridge. — To three quarts 
of water add one of milk, and a tea cup full of 
ground rice, and boil it a few minutes. 

Indian Porridge. — Throw in a tea cup full 
of rice into boiling water ; then stir in the meal as 
you would for mush, but make it much thinner. 
Boil it one hour, and add cold milk. 

Cracked Wheat Porridge. — ^To four quarts 
of boiling water, stir in one quart of cracked wheat 
with a handful of rice ; when boiled twelve or 
fifteen minutes, add milk to your taste. 

Cracked Wheat Mush. — When the water is 
boiling throw in the salt, stir in the cracked wheat, 
and let it boil twelve or fifteen minutes. If boiled 
as long as Indian, it tastes raw. 

Indian Gruel. — Take one quart of boiling 
water, two large spoonfuls of Indian meal, wet it 
in cold water, then stir it into the boiling water, 
and let it boil ten minutes, and it is fit for use. 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 411 

Milk Porridge. — ^Mix two table spoonfuls of 
sifted flour in three or four of water ; pour it into 
a gill or more of boiling water, and stir it often 
while it cooks, eight or ten minutes ; then add a 
pint of new milk, and let it boil up once. 



PIES, JELLIES, &c. 

Pumpkin Pie. — To one quart of stewed and 
strained pumpkin, add one quart of new milk, and 
sweeten it to your taste. For the crust, take wheat 
tneal, wet with buttermilk to a sufScient stiffness to 
roll out. Or for Indian meal crust, scald the meal ; 
have it of a sufficient stiffness to roll out very thin. 
Bake it in deep dishes. 

Another. — Pare your pumpkin and grate it, 
instead of stewing it. When grated, take about 
half a pint to a quart of milk, three spoonfuls of 
sugar, half a tea spoonful of salt ; butter your 
plate, sift on Indian meal sufficient for a crust, put 
in your pie, and bake it an hour and a quarter. 

Another. — Take a brown earthen pan, grease 
it, and sift Indian meal over it about the thickness 
of a quarter of an inch ; prepare the pumpkin in 
good milk and sweetening, add a little ground rice 
instead of eggs, with a little ginger. Ground rice, 



412 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPEB. 

squashes and sweet potatoes, may be made into pies 
in the same way, and are superior to pumpkins. 

SquASH Pies. — Boil and strain your squash in 
the usual way. To one pint of squash add one 
quart of milk, five or six soft crackers, four large 
spoonfuls of sugar, and a little salt. Make your 
crust of Indian meal sifted over the dish dry, or 
mixed with water and spread over thin, and baked. 

Sweet Potatoe Pies. — Take two pounds of 
potatoes, boil them very soft, mash them, and 
while lukewarm, add a quart of milk, a cup of 
sugar, and one cracker. Strain it, and bake them 
as you would squash pies. 

Custard Pies. — Take a coffee cup of ground 
rice, wet it up with cold milk so as to have it free 
from lumps ; add to this two quarts of boiling 
milk, and let it continue to boil till the rice flour is 
thoroughly swelled ; then sweeten it with sugar, 
and salt it to your taste. Bake the pies thoroughly 
on plates, or in deep dishes, with a wheat meal 
crust ; or as some prefer, take Indian meal, sift it 
dry into suitable dishes — this will form a crust suf- 
ficiently short, and avoid the objection which some 
have to the use of buttermilk and saleratus. The 
pies should be one day old before they are cut. 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 413 

Apple Pies. — Apple pies may be made simple, 
palatable and healthy, by sifting coarse flour, and 
taking hot, mealy potatoes, and rubbing them in 
as you would butter. Then take pearlash and 
sour milk, or water, and wet it, rolling the crust, 
if you please, in fine flour, if you wish to give it a 
whiteness. Prepare your apple without butter or 
spice, with sweetening only. 

Apple Custard. — Put one quart of grated 
sweet apple into one quart of milk. Sweeten to 
the taste ; put it into a crust, and bake it. 

Temperance Mince Pies. — Take one quart 
of good rye or wheat bread, after it is chopped 
fine, and one quart of sour apples, chopped fine ; 
add the juice of six lemons, two large spoonfuls of 
ground cinnamon, a large tea spoonful of salt, a 
pint of cream or milk, a pint of the best sugar- 
bakers' molasses, and a pint of washed raisins. 
Grate in a lemon peel. Bake them one hour. 

Paste. — Take ten boiled potatoes, peel them 
immediately, and roll them until they are as fine 
as meal. Then add to them the same quantity of 
wheat meal ; rub them thoroughly together, and 
add a tea spoonful of salt. It will require very little 
more moisture, which may be milk. 



414 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Pie Crust.' — One quart of fine flour, one pint 
of Indian meal, one tea cup full of cream, and a 
little saleratus and salt. Mix with sour milk. 

Tapioca Jelly — Sago Jelly. — These articles 
need to be picked, washed and soaked four or five 
hours, before they are cooked. Boil them slowly 
in the same water, until the mass becomes entirely 
glutinous. A common tea cup full in a quart of 
water will form a thick jelly. Pearl sago is gene- 
rally preferred, as the most delicate preparation. 

Arrow-root Jelly. — Stir a table spoonful of 
arrow-root powder into half a cup of water, pour it 
into a pint of boiling water, and let it cook six or 
eight minutes. Sweeten it to your taste. 

Rice Jelly. — Boil a quarter of a pound of rice 
flour with half a pound of loaf sugar, in a quart 
of water, till the whole becomes a glutinous mass. 
Then strain it, and let it cool. 

Rice Custards. — Take two quarts of milk, 
and when boiling, sift in a coffee cup of ground 
rice, taking care to stir it while sifting. Boil it a 
few minutes, sweeten it with sugar, and bake it in 
cups. Let it stand till it is cold, and it will make 
a custard as good as any one need desire. 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 



415 



Blanc Mange. — Take four table spoonfuls of 
arrow-root to one quart of milk. Wet the arrow- 
root in a little of the milk, cold. Then boil the 
remainder of the milk, and stir in the arrow-root 
while it is boiling. Let it boil five or ten minutes, 
stirring it constantly. Wet the moulds in cold 
water, before pouring it into them. Let it remain 
in them till cold, before turning it into your dishes. 

Toast Without Butter. — Take milk and 
thicken it with fine flour, add some salt, and pre- 
pare your bread and dip it in the usual way. 
Milk prepared in this way is an excellent substi- 
tute for butter, to eat with fish or vegetables. 

Syrup for Preserves. — Take eight pounds 
of molasses, (bright New Orleans, or sugar house,) 
eight pounds of pure water, and one pound of 
coarsely powdered charcoal. Boil for twenty min- 
ntes ; then strain it through a fine flannel, double ; 
put it again into the preserving pan, with the white 
of an egg. Boil gently, till it forms a syrup of a 
proper consistence, and then strain it again. 

Boiling Eggs.— Put the eggs in a pan of cold 
water over the fire, and if permitted to boil one 
minute, the eggs will be done as much as when 
boiled three minutes in the usual way. 



416 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Stewed Prunes. — Stew them very gently, in 
a small quantity of water, till the stones sHp out. 



YEAST. 

Common Yeast. — Put into one gallon of water 
a double handful of hops ; boil them fifteen or 
twenty minutes, then strain ofF the water while it 
is scalding hot ; stir in wheat flour or meal till it 
becomes a thick batter, so that it will hardly pour ; 
let it stand till it becomes about blood warm, then 
add a pint of lively yeast, and stir it well ; and 
then let it stand in a place where it will be kept at 
a temperature of about 70^^ F., till it becomes per- 
fectly light, whether more or less time is required ; 
and then it is fit for use. Or if it is desired to keep 
a portion of it, let it stand several hours and 
become cool ; and then put it into a clean jug and 
cork it tight, and place it in the cellar where it 
will keep cool ; and it may be preserved good ten 
or twelve days, and even longer. 

Milk Yeast. — -Take a quart of milk fresh 
from the cow, (more or less according to the quan- 
tity of bread desired) — a little salt is generally 
added, and some add about half a pint of water 
blood warm, but this is not essential ; then stir 
wheat flour or meal into the milk, till it forms a 



RECIPES rOR PLAIN COOKING. 417 

moderately thick batter ; and then cover it over, 
and place it where it will remain, at a temperature 
of from 60 to 70° F., till it becomes perfectly 
light. It should be used immediately ; but let it 
be remembered that dough made with this yeast, 
will sour sooner than that made with other yeast. 
When a small quantity only is made, it will often 
be ready for use in an hour. Twice as much 
of this as of common yeast is necessary to raise 
bread. 

PoTATOE Yeast. — Potatoes make very good 
yeast. Mash three large potatoes fine ; pour a pint 
of boiling water over them ; when almost cold, stir 
in two spoonfuls of flour, two of molasses, and a 
cup of good yeast. This yeast should be used 
while new. 



BEANS AND PEAS. 

Baked Beans. — They should be soaked over 
night. In the morning, turn off the water and put 
them into fresh, hang them over the fire, and while 
softening, the water should be changed at least 
twice. When placed in the pots for baking, 
sprinkle on a little salt, and fill them with boiling 
water. The same course, respecting changing the 
water, should be pursued while stewing the beans. 
27 



418 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

Peas should be prepared in the same manner as 
beans, but they need not bake as long ; three hours 
is sufficient. 

Dry Peas. — Obtain the kind that are of a 
green color, soak them during the night in water 
"with a little saleratus in it. Boil them until they 
begin to soften, then change the water, and con- 
tinue the boiling until they are perfectly soft. Add 
a little salt, and they make a very fine dish. The 
split pea, when the kind can be obtained that will 
cook, prepared in the same manner, makes a most 
excellent soup. 

Boiling Peas. — Shell them as clean as possi- 
ble, that they may not require washing. Boil 
them with a little salt in a very little water. Be 
careful not to over-boil them, as it destroys the 
flavor. When they are boiled enough, drain them 
through a sieve, but not very dry. 

Pea Soup. — For a soup, the peas should be 
boiled in soft water till they begin to be soft ; 
then change the water ; and when well cooked, a 
little coarse flour may be added as thickening. In 
all modes of cooking peas and beans, they should 
be prepared without meat or butter. 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 419 

Green Beans. — If they are boiled by steam, 
they should be boiled from one hour and a half to 
two hours, according to the age of the beans. 



POTATOES. 

Roasting Potatoes. — They should be washed 
clean and well dried, before they are put into the 
oven, or before the fire. If they are large, they 
will take two hours to roast ; and they should be all 
of a size, or they will not be done ahke. 

Boiled Potatoes. — ^Pare and wash the pota- 
toes very clean ; put them into a pan with cold 
water, just sufficient to cover them, adding a little 
salt ; let them boil very gently, and when boiled 
enough, or before they break, drain the water from 
them as dry as possible ; sprinkle in a little salt, 
and hold them over the fire to dry, shaking the 
pan now and then, till the potatoes look dry and 
mealy. 

Another. — They should be of equal size, or the 
small ones will be too much done, before the large 
ones are done enough ; do not pare or cut them ; 
have so large a sauce-pan that your potatoes will 
only half fill it, and put in cold water sufficient to 
cover them about an inch, so that if it waste in 



420 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

boiling, they may still be covered ; but too much 
water would injure them. Put the sauce-pan on 
the fire, if it be a moderate one, and as soon as 
the water boils, set it on one side, to simmer slowly 
till the potatoes will admit a fork — the cracking 
of the skin beins; too uncertain a test to venture a 
reliance upon. Having tried them with a fork, if 
they are tender, pour the water off, and place the 
sauce-pan by the fire, take off the cover, and lay a 
folded cloth or coarse flannel over the potatoes. 
Middling sized potatoes will be boiled enough in 
twenty minutes. 

'Some people, (and I have been told it is prac- 
tised generally in Ireland,) when they have poured 
off the water, lay the potatoes in a coarse cloth, 
sprinkle salt over, and cover them up, for a few 
minutes, then squeeze them lightly, one by one, in 
the folds of a dry cloth, peel and serve them. 

Another. — Take care that your kettle is clean. 
Pardy pare your potatoes, and place them in your 
kettle when the water boils. As soon as they are 
sufficiently cooked, pour off the water and let 
them steam at least five minutes. 

Another. — Peel your potatoes and put them 
mto boiling water, and let them boil briskly, with- 
out stopping, until nearly done, or just enough to 



RECIPES FOK PLAIN COOKING. 421 

have a fork go into them with difficulty ; then 
drain off the water and cover them ; then hang 
them over the fire from five to ten minutes. Re- 
move the cover for the steam to escape, a few 
minutes. 

Steaming Potatoes.— When potatoes are 
washed clean, put them in your steamer over 
boiling water, and keep it boiling from forty to 
sixty minutes, according to the size of the potatoes ; 
watch them, and as soon as they are soft, (which 
you will know by trying them with a fork,) take 
them out and peel them. If they remain longer 
they will be soaked. If you boil them in water, 
have it boiling, and keep it so from twenty to forty 
minutes, and take them out as soon as they are 
done ; they are spoiled, to remain in water when 
done ; peel them immediately. 

PoTATOE Snow.— The potatoes must be free 
from spots, and the whitest you can get ; put them 
on in cold water, with some salt in it, and let them 
simmer very slowly ; when they begin to break, 
drain the water well from them, and dry them 
exceedingly well, till they fall to pieces ; rub them 
through a wire sieve as quickly as possible, on the 
dish they are to be placed in, and do not disturb 
them afterwards. 



422 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 



VARIOUS ARTICLES. 

Boiling Cabbage. — Halve, or if large, quarter 
the cabbages ; boil them quickly in plenty of 
water, with a little salt. When half done, drain 
them, and put them into fresh boiling water. 
When boiled enough, drain and press all the 
water from them. 

Cabbage or Greens. — Put them into a large 
quantity of boiling water, with some salt, and a 
little saleratus. Boil them very fast, with the 
cover off, and do not let them stop boiling. Take 
them up as soon as done. 

Cooking Pumpkin. — Cut your pumpkin in 
halves, scrape and clear out the seeds and pulp, 
and leave the rind on. Bake it three or foui 
hours, with a strong heat. 

It is veiy good stewed. For this purpose, peel 
it, cut it up, and put it into a pot covered close, 
with a very little water, just enough to keep up a 
steam, and steam it three or four hours. 

Squash. — Squashes should be boiled an hour 
and a half, in winter. When well cooked, the 
water should be pressed out ; or what is better, 
boil it till the water has evaporated. • 



RECIPES FOR PLAIN COOKING. 423 

Boiling Beets. — Let the root be well washed, 
and boiled in a moderate quantity of water — put- 
ting it into the water when cold. A large beet 
will require boiling "an hour and a half. 

Another. — Beets, when washed and cleansed, 
without breaking the skin, should be put into the 
water when it is boiling, and should be kept boil- 
ing from one to two hours, according to the size. 
Take them out when done, (which you will find 
out by trying them with a fork,) — rub the skin off 
with your hand. 

Boiling Turnips. — They should be pared, 
washed, and put into boiling water ; and care 
should be taken that they continue to boil till 
they are sufliciently cooked. 

If cooked by steam, (which is the best method,) 
they will need cooking three quarters of an hour ; 
and if large, a still longer time. 

French turnips need to be sliced before boiling. 

Parsnips and Carrots.^— Let them boil in 
plenty of water, with salt, till tender ; then serve 
them on a dish by themselves. Parsnips should 
be boiled from twenty to thirty minutes. 

Asparagus. — Cut pfF as much of the white end 
of the shoots as will leave them about six Inches 



424 THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER. 

long. Scrape the remaining white part very clean, 
and as fast as they are done, put them into fresh 
water. Tie them up in small, even parcels, put 
them into boiling water, and boil them till tender, 
but do not over-boil them. Take them up into 
a sieve, to drain a little. 

Onions. — Onions need boiling twenty or twen- 
ty-five minutes. The water should boil when 
they are put in. 

Onions may also be boiled in milk, which ren- 
ders them more mild, and to many persons, more 
palatable. 



VALUABLE WORKS 

PUBLISHED BT 

GEORGE W. LIGHT, 

1 CORNHILL, BOSTON. 



The strong approbation which the following works 
have met with where they are known, has induced the 
Publisher to commence stereotyping them, and to take 
efficient measures for their circulation in all parts of the 
country. 

THE YOUNG WIFE, 

OR 

Duties of Woman in the Marriage Relation. 

Fifth Stereotype Edition, 

Embellished by a beautiful Steel Plate and Vignette. 

BY DR. WM. A. ALCOTT. 

This work is based on the principle, that the great business of 
the wife is Education — the education of herself and her family, 'h 
Oierefore exhibits the duties of a wife, especially to her husband, ia 
B. manner at once original and striking. The author presupposei 
her to have set out in matrimony with christian principles and 
purposes; and hence proceeds to inculcate what he deems th« 
best methods of applying' them in the routine of daily life and 
ftonversation. We believe that no one can rise from the perusal 
of this volume without a higher respect for female character, aa 
well as a higher confidence in the divine wisdom of matrimonj^ 



GEORGB "W. light's PUBLICATIONS 



The following are a few of the i5ubjects treated upon : 

Submission. Kindness. Cheerfulness. Confidence. Sympathy. 
Friendship. Love. Delicacy and Modesty. Love of Home. 
Self-Respect. Purity of Character. Simplicity. Neatness. Order 
and Method. Punctuality. Early Rising. Industr}'. Domestic 
Economy. Domestic Reform. Sobriety. Discretion. Scolding. 
Forbearance. Contentment. Habits and Manners. Dress. Health. 
Attending the Sick. Love of Childhood. Giving Advice. Self- 
Government. Intellectual Lnprovement. Social Lnprovement. 
Moral and Religious Improvement. Moral Influence on the Hus- 
band. 

The following are selected from the many favorable notices of 
this work. 

" This is one of the best practical treatises of the clay ; correct and 
thorough in its teachings — fdmiliar and forcible in its reasonings and illus- 
trations, as well as excellent in its intent and object, on every point of 
domestic economy and good deportment. The youug wife (and many old 
ones too, as well as those who are neither) will find this volume an able 
counsellor and guide. We rejoice to perceive that the work has reached 
a second edition, almost before being known out of the city of Boston, and 
trust that another edition will not supply the demand of this city alone. 
A hundred thousand copies v/ould not suffice for the whole country, if all 
who need its instructions were prepared to receive them. The require- 
ments of economy, industry, temperance, healthfulness, purity, &c., &c., 
and all domestic virtues, are here most clearly set forth and cogently en- 
forced. May they be as faithfully studied and heeded ! ■" — [New Yorker.] 

" From the examination wo have given it, and the praises of our ' help 
meet,' we would recommend it to old and young married ladies, and indeed 
to young unmarried ladies, as well as gentlemen. From the various and 
important subjects of the book, the master mind of the author has drawn 
lessons of deep and lasting utility. We say to all women, Buy the book — 
it will prove a treasure." — [Mechanic and Farmer.] 

" It is replete \vith good common sense, sound reasoning, scriptural 
testimony, and felicitous illustration from all sources. Our advice to every 
young wife, and to all elder wives, who are willing to improve themselves 
and their families, is, to procure this book, and read it j and read it again, 
and again, and they will not fail to appreciate its worth." — [BosTOW 
Recorder.] 

" It contains many excellent hints for the formation of the character of a 
good and useful wife." — [Christian Register.] 



ON HEALTH, DOMESTIC DUTIES, ETC. 3 

" We find much to approve, little to cavil with, and nothing to condemn 
in this book. It is one of a class of books which should fill a shelf in 
every lady's book-case." — [Ladies' Compajtion.] 

" We think it eminently calculated to do good, and would heartily 
-commend it. As a present, it is the most fitting one that can be made to 
a lady — whether married or single, in the bloom or the wane. It is worth 
a thousand of the trashy annuals, with their rich binding and gilt leaves." 
— fPoRTLAND Transcript. ] 

" It is the best book on the subjects upon which it treats that was ever 
made. — [Zion's Herald.] 

OJr Copies iii extra binding for Presents. 



THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER, 

OR 

Thoughts on Food and Cookery, 

Stereotype Edition. 
BY DR. WM. A. ALCOTT. 

The gjand object of this work is, to promote physical and moral 
education. In this view it aims to render the maternal house-keeper 
intelligent, rather than mechanical. It treats of most of the various 
kinds of food, both animal and vegetable, in common use, and of 
the most simple and rational modes of preparing them. And in 
presenting what are claimed to be improved view^s or modes of 
cookery, it gives reasons why they are so. It shows that a large 
amount of time now devoted to the preparation of food and drink,, 
is worse than wasted, and that this time ought to be and must be 
redeemed, and applied by the house-keeper herself to the physical, 
moral and social improvement of her family. It is believed that 
this Manual will save at least one hundred dollars a year to every 
large family, which may be devoted to other emd nobler purposes 
than mere eating and drinking. 



GEORGE W. light's PUBLICATIONS 



THE YOUNG MOTHER, 

OR 

The Physical Education of Children. 

Third Edition — Embellished by « Vignette. 

BY DR. WM. A. ALCOTT. 

The " Young Mother " is designed as an every-day manual foT 
those who are desirous of conducting the physical education of the 
young — from the very first — on such principles as Physiology Euid 
Chemistry indicate. It inculcates the great importance of pro- 
renting evil — especially physical evil — b}' implanting good habits. 
We believe it to be the only work of a popular character, written 
by a medical man, on this subject, and that it is, on this account, 
doubly valuable. It is recommended by the Boston Medical and 
Surgical Journal, and by the Press generally, as a work which 
should be possessed by every family. 

The following editorial remarks will give some idea of the man» 
ner in which it has been noticed in various parts of the country, 
though many of the best periodicals have spoken of it in still 
stronger terms of approbation. The Christian Mirror observes— 

" The subject of this book is of vital interest to the whole human 
family, and is treated by Dr. Alcott with the most intelligible sinv 
plicity. We hope it will find its way into the hands of all who 
Bre entrusted with the training and rearing of children 5 and that its 
sound views will supplant many of those hurtful maxims and prai> 
tices which are 1 amentably prevalent, and that the existing generz^ 
tion of mankind •will be succeeded by a more healthy and a mora 
moral race." 

The following is a brief synopsis of the Contents : 

The Nursery. Temperature of the Nursery. Ventilation of tbo 
Nursery. The Child's Dress ; Swathing the Body ; Form of the 
Dress 5 Material of Dress ; Quantity of Dress ; Caps ; Hats and 
Boajiets 5 Covering for the Feet ; Pins 5 Remaining Wet 5 Remarks 



ON HEALTH, DOMESTIC DUTIES, ETC. 5 

on the Dress of Boys ; on the Dress of Girls. Cleanliness. Bath- 
ing. Food ; Nursing — how often ; Quantity of Food ; How long 
should Milk be the only Food? On Feeding before Teething ; From 
Teething to Weaning ; During the Process of Weaning ; Food 
subsequently to Weaning ; Remarks on Fruit ; Confectionary ; 
Pastry ; Crude, or Raw Substances. Drinks. Giving Medicine. 
Exercise — Rocking in the Cradle ; Carrying in the Arms 5 Crawl- 
ing 5 Walking ; Riding in Carriages ; Riding on Horseback. 
Amusements. Crj'ing. Laughing. Sleep — Hour for Repose; 
Place for Repose ; Purity of the Air ; The Bed ; The Covering ; 
Night Dresses ; Posture of the Body ; State of the Mind ; Quality 
of Sleep ; Quantity of Sleep. Early Rising. Hardening the 
Constitution. Societj'. Employments. Education of the Senses — 
Hearing — Seeing — Tasting and Smelling — Feeling. Abuses. 

(O' Copies bound in extra style for Presents. 



THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, 

OR 

THE HUMAN BODY. 

* Second Edition^^eniirely re-written, enlarged and improved. 

FOR THE USE OF FAMILIES AND SCHOOLS. 

BY DR. WM, A. ALCOTT. 

The great difficulty of making a subject which has hitherto b^en 
deemed dry and unintelligible, at once agreeable and interesting 
to the young mind, has led the author of this volume to describe 
the human body as a House. 

The work treats, first, on the Frame — consisting of the bones, 
muscles, tendons, &c. ; secondly, of the Covering — consisting of 
the skin, hair, nails, eyes, ears, dec. ; and thirdly, of the Apart- 
ments and Furniture — by which are meant the interior cavities 
and organs. Nearly every anatomical and physiological term 
which appears in the work is so used or so explained, as to be at 
once clearly understood and apprehended. The subject js illu*- 
tra^ by numerous engravings. 



6 GEORGE Vr. LIGHT'S PUBLICATIONS 

The best recommendation of this work is, that it has been unfVep- 
sally approved of by the families and schools where it has been 
introduced, and by all medical men who have examined it. It hzui 
also received the entire approbation of the Press, and is selling 
rapidly. 

The Philadelphia Cofflmercial Gazette, in speaking of it says — "It in 
full of instruction and entertainment. It gives as plain and simple a 
description of the human body as it is possible to write." 

This work has also received the high commendation of Mrs. L. H. 

SlOOURNET. 

^f!j= By letters recently received from Europe, we learn that it is in the 
course of re-publication in Lnndon, and that the teachers in the famotin 
institution of Count Fellenberg, at Hofwyl, in Switzerland, make it one 
of the regular exercises of their pupils in French to translate it into that 
language. 



LIBRARY OF HEALTH, 

AND 

Teacher on the Human Constitution. 

Published Monthly — Price %1 a Year, in advance. 
DR. WM. A. ALCOTT, Editor. 

This is a Periodical work, originally called the "Moral Re- 
former, and Teacher on the Human Constitution." It is published 
in numbers of 32 pages each, in neat book style for binding into a 
volume, illustrated by engravings, and has now concluded the third 
year of its publication. The numbers of the past years are for 
sale, bound in neat volumes. 

This work discusses, in a familiar manner, all subjects connected 
with physical education and self-management. It treats on the 
connection of light, air, temperature, cleanliness, exeb- 
casE, sleep, food, drink, climate, the passions, affeo- 
TioNS, &c., with health, happiness and longevity. The 
editor takes the ground that a proper understanding of the consti- 



ON HEALTH, DGMESTIO pUTIES, ETC. 7 

tutional laws of ihe human body, and of all its organs and func- 
tions, and a strict obedience thereto, are indispensable to the 
highest perfection and happiness — present and future — of everj 
living human being. He deems this knowledge more and more 
indispensable in proportion to the progress of civilization and 
refinement. The work is pledged to support no system nor set of 
principles, any farther than that system and those principles can be 
proved to be based on the laws of Physiology, and revealed 
truth, and on human experience; and consequently its pages ara 
always open to fair and temperate discussion. 

The work has recently been warmly approved of by Georgk 
Combe, (author of the " Constitution of Man,") as well as a large 
number of distinguished men of this country, among whom are the 
foJlowing : 

Dr. John C. Warren, Dr. S. B. Woodward, Rev. Dr. Humphrey, 
Rev. S. R. Hall, Rev. Hubbard Winslow,Rev. R. Anderson, Rev. 
Baron Stow, Rev. B. B. Wisner, R. H. Gillet, Esq., Rev. Wm. 
Hague, Roberts Vaux, Esq., Dr. John M. Keagy, Dr. R. D. Mus- 
sey. Prof. E. A. Andrews, Rev. L. F. Clark, Rev. M. M. Carll, 
Rev. Dr. Fay, Dr. Sylvester Graham. 

These recommendations are similar to the following, received 
from Dr. Warren : 

" The Library of Health is, in my opinion, an excellent publica- 
tion. It seems to be well adapted to aid in the great reform in 
habits and customs which is now going on in this countrj' and Great 
Britain ; and which, it may be hoped, will extend to other parts of 
the world. I beg leave to recommend this little work to all who 
are desirous of promoting their health of body and tranquillity of 
mind." 

Many of the most respectable Journals in the country, have also 
■given their testimony in its favor. The following are a very few 
of them : 

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Annals of Education, 
Abbott's Religious Magazine, Boston Recorder, Christian Regis- 
ter, Christian Watchman, Zion's Herald, New York Farmer. 

We feel entire confidence in ofiering this publication to all who 
are interested in the improvement which Dr. Alcott is endeavoring 
to promote. 



9 GEORGE W. light's PUBLICATIONS, 



A TREATISE 

ON 

BREAD AND BREAD-MAKING. 

BY SYLVESTER GRAHAM. 

Tills treatise, by the celebrated lecturer on the Science of Hainan 
Life, recently published, has thus far met with a good sale, and Will 
doubtless have a wide circulation. It meets with strong- favor even 
among those who do not agree with iVIr. G. in his general principles 
of diet, &c. It treats on the following subjects : 

History of Bread ; Laws of Diet 5 Material of Bread ; Proper- 
ties of Bread ; Fermentation 5 Preparation of Bread j Who should 
make Bread ; Varieties of Bread. 

The Boston Recorder remarks — " It is a treatise, as we jndye, of 
great importance to all who eat bread, and to all wlio make bread, and 
to all wbo love bread. Whatever objections may lie against some of M». 
Graham's theories, or against his 'measures,' this little work deservet 
tlie attention of all who regard health, comfort and life itself. Facts are 
stated which ought to be known ; and reasonings are applied which can ha 
more easily rejected with supercilious scorn, than refuted on philosophical 
principles," 



G. W. L. publishes a number of valuable books in 
addition to the works here advertised, and keeps on 
hand a general assorttnent of School, Theologicai., 
Religious, Moral, Physiological and Miscellanb- 
ous Books, together with a good variety of Stationary, 
for sale, wholesale and retail, at as low prices as those 
of any other house in the country. Special effort ia 
made to keep a complete and constant supply of popular 
works on Health. He also executes Printing, of all 
kinds, on the most reasonable terms. 



jai^ 



